Several Miles from the Sun
by alyseci5
Summary: The first step is always the hardest. After that, it's all downhill. Abby/Connor
1. Chapter 1

**Pairing:** Abby/Connor eventually

**Spoilers:** This is an AU from 2.04, so spoilers up until the end of that episode

**Disclaimer:** Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.

**Author's Notes:** Written for the Primeval Ficathon for temaris, whose prompt was _part or all of the team are trapped when an anomaly closes, and they have to find a way home_ and who wanted _a happy ending, action/adventure, Connor heroics, and Abby/Connor_. The title - and quotes - are from 'The Sun' by Maroon 5.

* * *

_the battle's almost won  
and we're only several miles from the sun_

The first step was the hardest. It always was, at least in Abby's experience, but this time it was hard both mentally and physically. Everything was wrong, off in a way she didn't want to think about. The sun was too bright and the air too hot. It tasted wrong, too, although Abby couldn't have explained what exactly what it that was wrong about it. It just felt thick in her mouth and each breath left her dizzy, settling into her lungs like treacle, choking her.

Or maybe that was just fear. Abby wasn't stupid and only an idiot wouldn't be scared right now.

She stumbled, her foot turning on a loose shard of rock. It caught her off guard and the fear lurched through her again before she could damp it down. Her heart was racing, her breath gasping and catching in her throat until she managed to hold off the fear again, push back the panic that prowled around the edges of her mind just waiting for her to lose her grip, to fall.

Connor grabbed for her, one of his hands seizing at her elbow while the other caught her hand, steadying her until she regained her balance. It was just as well, she thought bleakly. With her luck so far, she'd fall flat on her face, do herself an injury. She was shivering in spite of the heat; her clothes were still drenched and she'd spent hours in the cold water of the canal and the flooded basement, the chill seeping deeper and deeper into her as each hour passed until even her bones seemed to ache with it. There'd been fear then too, the weight of it crushing her until she thought that the fear would drown her before those things had a chance to.

It had to be that lingering cold now that meant she couldn't stop shaking even with the sun beating down on them. It was so bright that all she saw around them was white, her vision blurring at the edges until her eyes stung and watered. It was simply because she was still so very cold, that was all.

Telling herself that, the voice in her head sounding weirdly like her mother, didn't help much. That small voice sounded too much like her mother, who she'd fought with about anything and everything since she was fourteen, the mother she hadn't spoken to for two weeks and now she might never...

She fought back that too, feeling the panic closing in again and refusing to give in to it. All she could do was blink, trying not to breathe in too deeply, not when the air was wrong and her eyes still burned from the sun. If she breathed in too deeply it might come out as a sob.

Connor still hadn't let go of her and she was stupidly, selfishly grateful for that, leaning against him for a moment until she could breathe safely again. He was wet too, his clothes clammy against her skin where her body pressed against his. His hair was still plastered against his cheek, the tendrils dark against his too pale skin. He wasn't looking at her though; all of his attention was focused on where the anomaly... wasn't.

He swallowed heavily; she could feel the motion as it moved through his body, the gentle rocking as he wavered on his feet. She was no longer clear which of them was holding the other upright and braced herself, clutching at him, thinking that if one of them fell at least they'd go together and that... that was something, wasn't it? She wasn't capable of more than that, couldn't do anything but breathe and wait for a miracle.

He swallowed and she watched his throat move, his lips parting for a second then closing. He didn't look at her for long seconds and when he did, his eyes were scared but he still managed to give her what he probably hoped was an encouraging smile.

"It'll be back," he said, and that was typical Connor - the triumph of hope over experience. "You'll see."

She didn't answer him - couldn't - and he swallowed again, eyes leaving hers like he couldn't bear to see the look on her face, the one that would shatter the fragile hope he was clinging to.

"It went... It went when we were looking for it, me and Cutter." Only now did he look back, the expression on his face begging for reassurance she wasn't sure she had to give. "When we were looking for you. It went and then the detector started off again and..."

"And then you found me." Her voice was low and throaty, the dust or the salt in the air making her throat itch. Her nose too, which felt tight beneath her eyes. He tried another smile, this one wavering around the edges just like he'd swayed on his feet.

"Yeah." He watched her for a long moment before blurting out, "It'll come back, Abby. It will."

There must have been something in his gaze that convinced her, or something that made her want to believe in it for his sake, because she found her eyes moving to where the anomaly had winked out of existence as though it would magically reappear, just because Connor wanted it to. Weirder things had happened, and she'd seen a hell of a lot of weirder things since she'd first stumbled across the anomalies.

But the horizon stayed empty, nothing but rock and scrub, no glimmer of anything that could be their salvation, and she shivered again, moving closer to Connor. She might not have Connor's unquestioning faith in Cutter but she had enough - in Cutter and in Stephen both - to know that if there was a way to work miracles, they'd find it, and that they would be working on it.

She could only hope that it was enough and that they'd be fast enough.

"I lost the detector," Connor murmured; his voice was muffled, his face now half buried in her hair. She hadn't been the only one to step closer, and his arm had moved from her elbow to around her waist, holding her up or using her to hold himself up. She couldn't be sure but there was nothing in it but comfort, not this time. "I'm sorry, Abby."

Not your fault, she wanted to say, but the air was weighing her down and all she could do was squeeze his fingers, which were still wrapped around hers. He pressed back, eyes still focused on where their missing way home had been.

She swallowed, tasting the dust and the salt hanging in the air. "We'll see it," she said finally, finding the reassurance he sought from somewhere even if she couldn't say where. "If - **when** - it comes back, we'll see it, Conn."

He didn't say anything to that but his fingers squeezed hers again, tightly, as they both watched and waited for a miracle.

**Day 1**

"We need to go back." Nick was repeating himself, over and over again, but Lester seemed determined to ignore him, as he had on all previous attempts. "D'you hear me, Lester? We need to go back."

Lester stopped abruptly, so abruptly that Nick nearly walked into the damned man. His expression, when he turned around, was his normal supercilious one and that did nothing to calm Nick down.

"Go back?" and he was seriously going to ram his fist down the man's throat, if only to wipe that look off his face. "Go back where, Professor? And for what?"

He tried to stay reasonable, for Abby and Connor's sake if nothing else, but he didn't need to be able to see the expression on Jenny's face, hovering behind Lester's shoulder now that the man was finally facing him, to know that he was missing it by a mile.

"Look. The anomaly could open again at any time. It opened when Connor and I were in the warehouse..."

"Yes." Lester tilted his chin, looking down his nose at Nick and punching him in the face was fast becoming appealing. "The warehouse. Which, once again, was nowhere near where you were supposed to be."

By now Nick had known Lester - even this version of Lester - long enough to recognise the need to head him off before he got going.

"We found the anomaly," he said, ploughing ahead over the beginnings of Lester's no doubt well worded tirade. "We found the boy..."

"And in the process, you lost two of your team."

It seemed as though Lester was beginning to recognise when to head him off as well and the words - both what he said and how he said it - stopped Nick in his tracks as effectively as a six ton Tyrannosaurus. "Look," Lester added, his voice softening a little, which meant it only grated on Nick's second last nerve. Lester had that pained expression he always got when it came to talking about anything other than logistics or budgets, as though he could barely stand to soil his mouth with the pleasantries that made up normal human interaction. The attempt at softening things didn't do anything to cushion the blow. "I realise that this isn't an easy thing to accept, Professor, but this isn't the first time we've lost some of our people and the best thing to do is put a brave face on it and carry on."

The words were meaningless, even more meaningless coming from Lester of all people. If he patted Nick on the arm Nick really **was** going to punch him out and damn the consequences. Not even Jenny's warning look would stop him. Thankfully, Lester appeared to think better of his momentary lapse into humanity and pulled sharply down on his jacket instead, snapping his cuffs like it meant something.

"Connor and Abby aren't dead." Nick's voice sounded hollow even to his own ears. It wasn't surprising to see Lester greet his statement with a sceptical look.

"Really?" As comebacks went, it wasn't one of Lester's better ones, but he was probably still labouring under the impression that he needed to go easy on Nick. It was disconcerting, to be on the other side of Lester trying to be reasonable if not pleasant.

"Lucian said that Abby was alive. They kept her alive like they kept him alive. Whatever those creatures wanted with her -"

"Probably as an entree."

He took a deep breath and reminded himself that punching Lester wasn't an option, not until he got what he wanted, needed. Then all bets were off.

"Connor went after her. He's probably with her right now."

"He's probably dessert." In spite of his words, Lester's look was close to sympathetic now, albeit it edged with his normal acerbic briskness, and that made it somehow worse. But he wouldn't have been Lester if his words didn't bite and bite hard, and it was like Pavlov's bell to Nick. It rang and his hackles went up.

"You don't know that." His voice was rising and eyes were turning in his direction. He didn't care. Abby and Connor were out there, trapped, and that was his fault. They were his responsibility, both of them, and he'd let them down. "You don't know that they're dead."

"And you don't know that they're alive." This was a Lester who was more familiar: pitiless and cold. It didn't make him any easier to deal with but it meant Nick could let the anger bubble up and block everything else out, at least until Stephen's fingers closed around his wrist, holding back the fist that was already starting to rise, keeping it - and Nick - steady.

"We have to try." Stephen's voice was calm, level, but his fingers dug into the tendons of Nick's wrist to the point of pain. "We can't give up yet. It's too soon."

'Too soon' implied that there was a point where they **would** give up, and Nick jerked his arm away from Stephen's grasp, refusing to look at his colleague even as he was peripherally aware of Stephen's head turning in his direction.

"They're not dead," he repeated, keeping his gaze locked on Lester as though it would make a difference. Jenny was just a blur behind Lester now; dark hair, pale skin and dark eyes, and utterly still. "I was right about the anomaly not being in the canal." Jenny would forgive him for appropriating her leap of intuition - Claudia would have and he could only hope there were enough similarities for it to hold true. She stayed still, watching but not commenting, not stepping in to smooth things over and shooting him a look that promised retribution the way she normally would. It sobered him and he took a deep breath, flexing his fingers and aware of Stephen hovering. "I was right about it being here. And I'm right about Connor and Abby."

Lester's gaze finally dropped as the man brought his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose, the gesture so typical of him when he was frustrated. If he was frustrated, so be it; Nick had no qualms about pissing him off, not any more. Never really had, not even in his reality, as Connor chose to call it. He doubted it had been much different in this one.

"Yes," and only Lester could make the admission sound like a victory instead of the concession it was. "You were right about it. You're very good at your job, Professor. Don't get cocky about it." He looked straight into Nick's eyes, his expression never wavering. "I'd hate to have to fire you twice in one day. The paperwork is such a pain. So let's hope you're right about Mr Temple and Ms Maitland." He paused for a beat, letting his words sink in, then continued, "Of course, maybe it would be better for them if they weren't given that they're currently trapped on the other side of an anomaly, and we have no idea when - or even if - it will reopen again."

"It will reopen." Nick kept his voice low, dangerous. It didn't impress Lester, who merely raised one eyebrow at his tome.

"Let's hope you're right about that too."

"I am. I told you..."

He broke off when dark clad figures began streaming into the warehouse behind Lester, their movements smooth and controlled. "What...?"

There went Lester's eyebrow again, along with the supercilious curl of his lip. "I'd say that was advice taken, wouldn't you, Professor?" And Nick was going to punch him, he was, whether Stephen stepped in or not. Would have done if Jenny hadn't taken a step towards them, her face creasing in a warning frown that was more irritation than fear.

"I take it that this will be more or less a permanent encampment," she observed in her cut-glass tones.

Lester straightened his cuffs again. Nick would have said that it was a nervous trait except that it was difficult to think of Lester as feeling nervous. Difficult to think of Lester actually feeling anything. "More or less," he agreed, eyeing Nick as though he were a particularly disagreeable specimen. "Very like the one in the Forest of Dean, as it happens. Which is, I believe, the only other regularly opening anomaly we have to date. Am I right, Leek?"

Leek oozed out of the dimness, coming to rest by Lester's side, one step behind as he always was. "I think you are, sir." That was a fairly typical response; it was the only type of thinking of which Leek seemed capable.

"You are... unbelievable."

Lester would never do anything as crass as smirk, but he came close. "At the risk of sounding trite, I believe that the operative term is something like 'we don't leave our people behind'." He varied his routine by straightening his tie, holding Nick's gaze with a rather jaundiced look. "And if you think the paperwork for firing someone is a pain, you can imagine what it's like to complete for missing persons. Two, in fact."

Nick nodded, not to acknowledge the point - or the cold blooded way in which it had been phrased - but accepting the rationale, which made sense in a purely Lester way. Acceptance was all he seemed capable of at the moment; he felt the energy drain out of him even as he watched the soldiers begin a sweep of the building. They wouldn't find anything, not now, but he appreciated the gesture anyway. Both from the soldiers and - hesitant though he was to admit it - from Lester.

The man didn't have a heart, or a soul, but Nick supposed that a sense of neatness occasionally worked on the same principles.

"**If** the anomaly opens again..." Far be it from Lester to concede the point for long. "... We'll be ready to move in. In the meantime, I suggest that Jenny and I decamp to the ARC, where Mr Temple's anomaly detector will no doubt be ready to let us know as soon as anything happens." He eyed Nick for a long moment, his head then turning towards Stephen and his expression managing to convey everything he thought about the condition of the pair of them. "And I suggest that the two of you decamp to the nearest available shower."

One of these days, he really was going to deck Lester. Just not when he was surrounded by heavily armed men.

Lester came close to smirking again, skirting around the edges like a pro, and then turned on his heel, nodding briefly at them before he strode towards the exit, Leek trotting behind him like the obedient lapdog he was. Jenny hesitated for a moment, eyeing both of them but somehow Nick didn't think it was their damp and muddy frames that had caught her attention. The thought was confirmed when she turned towards the rear of the building, where the anomaly had been before it had so suddenly closed, snatching the hope of getting Connor and Abby back from them. Her expression was torn.

"Do you really think...?"

"Yes." He didn't let any doubt into his voice but she turned back towards him, her dark eyes searching his face. He didn't know whether she found what she needed - compared to Claudia, she was sometimes frustratingly opaque - but if she didn't, she gave no sign of it, mimicking Lester's brief nod before she, too, headed towards the exit.

That left him standing in the middle of a nearly empty warehouse, Stephen a silent presence at his side.

"What are their chances?" Stephen asked after a long pause. When Nick stole a glance at him, Stephen wasn't watching him. His face was turned towards the soldiers, now clustered around their equipment as they conferred with one another and set up camp with the ease and efficiency of long practice. "Realistically, I mean."

He didn't want to think about it, but Stephen was right. They'd do Connor and Abby no favours if they didn't think about all of the potential scenarios, good or bad. "If the anomaly reopens fairly soon, and assuming that the flooding is tidal rather than being because it's underwater on the other side, then I think they have one." He had to think that, had to. It beat thinking about the future evolution of the shark, or exactly why those Walrus type creatures had grabbed Abby in the first place.

Stephen nodded but stayed silent, and he felt forced to add, "They're both smart, resourceful."

Another nod from Stephen, who was back to focusing on whatever the soldiers were up to. There was another one of those pauses, no longer as comfortable as they had been, at least from what Nick remembered. Maybe Stephen remembered differently. Maybe the distance between them that felt so strange and yet so unassailable to Nick was nothing new as far as Stephen - **this** Stephen - was concerned.

"Neither of them has survival training, though," Stephen offered, his tone a little too cool and calm for Nick's comfort. It felt like giving up, for all that Stephen hadn't suggested as much, at least not out loud. He'd feel better if Stephen looked at him, but instead Stephen's eyes tracked from the soldiers to the back of the warehouse, back towards the anomaly site. His expression was thoughtful but closed off and Nick had to remind himself that he wasn't the only one who'd lost two people he cared about, even if it was only temporary - and it was. He refused to think of it in any other way, especially not when he'd already given up on Abby once and been proven wrong.

"No," he agreed, the admission pained. "But they have each other."

As answers went, it wasn't much of one, but Stephen merely nodded again, not challenging him about it. Not this time.

"Let's hope it's enough," was all he said, sounding eerily, for a moment, like Lester.

"It will be," Nick said, and it came out sounding like a prayer. "It will be."

* * *

**Day 2**

"Abby?"

She must have fallen asleep on the sofa again - she was cold and stiff, lying on something with no give, not like her lovely soft bed. She hoped Connor hadn't turned the heating down again - her reptiles wouldn't like it and that meant she didn't either. She muttered something in Connor's direction, maybe even something about that, wondering why her eyelids felt like lead, but he was insistent, shaking her gently, murmuring her name again.

And then it all came rushing back, and she felt colder still. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, staring out of the entrance of the small cave they'd retreated to the night before, as darkness had fallen. As caves went, it wasn't much of one - more like a dimple in the rock - but it was the closest thing to shelter they'd been able to find.

No amount of staring now changed the view - it stayed too bright, too hard and alien. Nothing at all like home.

"Is it...?" She couldn't help the hope that crept into her voice as she turned to face Connor. Her voice came out as a croak and she had to swallow before she could get both words out. Her mouth was as dry as a bone, as dry as the rocks outside. She tried to ignore it but it was hard, so hard when her throat was rough and the thirst - and the fear that lurked behind it - seemed as wide and all encompassing as the barren vista spread out before them.

His face fell and his head drooped slightly. He refused to meet her eyes as he spoke but he needn't have bothered - the fact that he wouldn't look at her gave her all the answer she needed.

"No. It's... there's no sign of the anomaly. Sorry."

Like it was his fault. If she wasn't so tired and thirsty she might even have been able to put him right on that point, but as it was, all she could muster up was a wan smile that couldn't have done anything to reassure him. Saying anything more right then was beyond her.

It had been a long night. Too long. Neither of them had slept much, and even when they had they'd had to take it in shifts, too scared of what might be out there in the dark, ready for them to drop their guard. It could have been **anything**.

Not that watching for trouble would have done them much good anyway. They had no weapons, nothing to defend themselves against anything that came calling, and their neighbours weren't exactly friendly.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and holding it in for the count of two, three. Then she let it out again, slowly, finding her centre.

"Right," she said, swallowing again before she could get the word out and trying to inject a snap into her voice and into her spine at the same time. Her tongue felt swollen and awkward in her mouth, difficult to wrap around the syllables. "We need a plan of action."

Connor was looking at her like he thought she'd lost her mind, and she had to take another deep breath just so she wouldn't snap at him. It wasn't his fault, she reminded herself. Just one of those things and it could have been a lot worse. A hell of a lot worse.

She'd be here on her own if he hadn't followed her, and she didn't rate her chances if he hadn't been there to pull her up, out of danger and out of reach of those snapping fangs. For a second she'd thought it would be too much, that she'd be too heavy, but Connor - once again - had come through, finding the reserves of strength from somewhere.

They weren't talking about it, any of it. She'd thought about bringing up Connor's declaration the night before, when the darkness had loomed, big and far from empty and when even talking about that seemed preferable to thinking too much about the things that sometimes yelped and screamed out there. She'd thought about it but when it came down to turning thinking into action she was just too much of a wuss. There was a squirrelly little feeling, deep in her chest, that made her want to run when she took out those memories and looked at them closely.

He'd been willing to die for her. He'd followed her through the anomaly without a second thought, and he'd been willing to die for her. Somewhere, in that same squirrelly little place, she thought that maybe she'd known why even before he'd said anything.

She'd been willing to die for him, too, begging him to drop her rather than risk being pulled over the edge by her weight, and that scared her even more. She didn't know what that said about how she felt. There were things in that little, buried place that she wasn't ready to deal with yet.

Best to focus on getting through today and then maybe tomorrow, when there'd be an anomaly opening, a way back home. Each day, one at a time, and she wasn't going to give up hope. Wouldn't let Connor give up hope either.

Connor was still watching her, and she swallowed again. "We've got to assume that the anomaly's going to open again at some point, right?" He raised an eyebrow but didn't comment and she was grateful for that. She pushed herself upright, shifting her backside on the cold, rock floor, eyeing the soft sand that Connor was sitting on that was just a little too close to the entrance for her comfort. Moving didn't make her any more comfortable, and her tailbone twinged when she settled her weight back onto it, but it gave her the opportunity to avoid Connor's eyes for a moment. He may not have said anything but she wasn't entirely sure that even she believed it what she'd said.

"In the meantime, we need to..." She'd been thinking about it all night and yet now she couldn't seem to find the words again. She was tired, bone deep tired, the stresses of the day before catching up on her and the words were just skittering away from her, no matter how hard her tongue tried to catch them.

Somewhere outside something barked, deep and hostile and she couldn't help it; she flinched, staring at the entrance, part of her convinced that any second now, something would appear, something that spelled the end for her and Connor both. Her back hit the wall; she wasn't even aware that she'd been moving and swallowed again, but she had no spit left to moisten her mouth.

Connor was staring at the entrance too, but if he was as terrified as she was, he was hiding it better. His face was serious though, dark eyes intense as he turned back towards her and for a split second she resented that, the way he was looking at her like he expected her to come up with the answers.

It wasn't fair, but then when had life ever been?

She tried to recapture her train of thought. "We need to... check out what we've got, figure out what the priorities are."

"Shelter, water, food," Connor said promptly, still focused on her. It threw her off balance for a second, but it was obvious that she hadn't been the only one to spend the night thinking, weighing things up. It was an odd streak of practicality for Connor, but then Connor could be practical when she least expected it and weirdly impractical about the things she took for granted.

He seemed to take her silence as questioning rather than stunned, and his expression changed from serious to a little wounded. "Shelter, 'cause... well, it's not exactly a safe neighbourhood, yeah?" He gave her a little smile, which missed its mark by just enough to be worrying. "And water... water's more important than food. You can survive a lot longer without food, especially in this dry climate." Her stomach took that little observation poorly and, bang on cue, rumbled loudly. Connor's smile this time was a little more genuine although it was still strained around the edges.

"So," she repeated, missing that smile as soon as it disappeared again, Connor's face settling back into serious. "Shelter, water, food." She ticked them off one by one on her fingers, watching his face as she did so.

"Fire," he added, shrugging when she gave him a quizzical look. "Suppose that could fall under shelter, but we need some way of making it, and I left my lighter back home with my fags and booze."

"Fire," she repeated, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. It would help keep them warm if nothing else. She'd been cold last night but whether that was because there had been a drop in temperature or because it simply felt colder in comparison to the heat of the day, she couldn't say. It might even have just been her, still stressed or shocked from the events of yesterday. She didn't like to think of herself in those terms, of course - shocked or stressed. It sounded too girly, too much like one of those romance novels her mother lapped up, where the heroine spent half her time swooning into the hero's arms and the other half of the time flinging herself stupidly into danger. She didn't like the thought but she was practical and from a medical standpoint it was always possible that her body had reacted to things by protecting her core body temperature. It was easier to think of it in those terms.

Besides, if she swooned into Connor's arms, he'd either panic or drop her.

But he hadn't dropped her, had he?

Connor was still watching her and she shifted uncomfortably, not liking where her thoughts were going when there were more important - at least from a survival point of view - things to think about. It wasn't like Connor to be this quiet for this long but she supposed he was as out of his depth as she felt.

Maybe he was waiting for something, but all she could think of saying was, "You don't smoke."

"Not any more." And that was weird, to think that there was something about Connor she didn't know. Only, as it turned out, she hadn't known a really big thing, had she? The biggest. The elephant that was in the room and that they still weren't talking about. Knowing their luck, it would turn out to be a mammoth.

There was another slightly awkward silence, Connor picking idly at a loose thread on his trousers. She had to fight the urge to slap his hand away - they were the only clothes he had but pointing that out seemed defeatist. In the end, she was the one to break that silence first. "Fire, then. Any idea how?"

"Short of rubbing two sticks together?" His brow furrowed in thought. "Iron pyrite might work if we can find any. Anything that would create sparks, really, and I don't think we'd have much difficulty after that."

"Oh?" So she was a little sceptical. It wasn't unreasonable of her. Connor did have a habit of not thinking things through. Smart - unbelievably smart sometimes - but also, a bit of an idiot on occasion, even if she did... was fond of him.

She wasn't going to go there, not now, staying resolutely silent on the subject of the elephant.

"Yeah." Connor hadn't noticed anything amiss, staring back out into the sunlight, which was growing brighter by the minute. He didn't elaborate though, instead biting at his lip like he was mulling something over.

"We need flint as well," he said suddenly.

"You mean... like a tinderbox?" she asked, turning the idea over in her mind.

"Yeah." He nodded outside. "Might be luckier in that. It usually forms in sedimentary rock and what does that look like?"

"Chalk," she said slowly, thinking about it and leaning forward to get a better look. The sun had moved and light was now falling into their sanctuary, pale strips that would only grow as the day grew older until even Abby was warmed up. She was still cold but the light spilling into their refuge was enough to see Connor clearly now: the strips of dust and dirt on his face; the dark bags under his eyes. "Sandstone maybe... but chalk."

Chalk, made up of the skeletons of billions and billions of tiny creatures. She shivered again. None of the stars last night had been familiar, not to her and she suspected not to Connor. How many millions of years must separate them from home for even the Universe they were in to have changed beyond recognition? If those cliffs outside were chalk, it could be composed of species that hadn't even existed back in their own time.

She was used to feeling small in the face of nature, especially these days, but this was light years beyond feeling small. It was almost like being one of those creatures, confronted by those cliffs. An entire landscape made up of skeletons of their kind, stretching vastly into the distance, something utterly impossible to comprehend. 'Insignificant' didn't even begin to cover it.

Connor nodded again, still not looking at her. His fingers had now having moved from his trousers to push into the sandy floor, letting the grains pass through his spread fingers, but he wasn't building sandcastles. He was back to chewing at his lip and she couldn't help but feel like there was something she was missing.

She was too cowardly to push it. Not now.

"What have we got, then?"

He glanced over at her, eyebrows raised.

"We need to catalogue what we've got, remember, Connor." It came out more harshly than she'd intended, but she was still off balance, scared and flailing for something, anything concrete to hold onto.

For a second, it looked like he was going to argue but he seemed to think better of it, shutting his mouth with an audible snap and turning his attention to his pockets instead.

It made for depressing viewing when they put it all together. They had a few coins, which might be useful for generating sparks or using as weights, maybe for fishing; their wristwatches, Abby's already soaked beyond repair; Connor's phone, also looking like it wasn't going to recover from the soaking he'd had; some damp tissues from Connor's pocket, stained with the dye that had leaked from his jacket. Those were the useless things and they formed the biggest pile, which even then wasn't that big.

The other pile - the pile for the things that they could foresee a use for - was far smaller. There was some wire that Connor, for some reason, had in his other pocket, wound into a neat little bundle with the loose ends wrapped tightly around the body. Also, Connor had a small pocket knife. It was a good one, proper Swiss Army, but small enough to be legal, with a blade that she suspected might not last long when they were up against the elements. They'd have to nurse it, or find a way to sharpen it, and pray it didn't snap.

She didn't have anything to put on that pile. Her shoelaces, she supposed, if it came down to it and they needed something, anything that could tie things together. Both she and Connor were wearing Converse, which meant long laces at least.

But they had nothing that could be used as a container, assuming that they did locate any water, and nothing that could be used for a weapon.

She swallowed heavily, trying not to let Connor see just how scared she was when they totalled their resources and came up well and truly screwed.

"Not much, is it?" Connor muttered quietly. He stared dispiritedly at the smaller pile and the look on his face didn't do anything to soothe her own fears.

"It's a start," she whispered, reaching down to gather up what she could, even the tissues. She wouldn't have been able to explain why, but there was a weird superstitious feel to it, that whole 'just in case' feeling, like leaving anything behind, even the most useless of things, was just inviting disaster. She rose to her feet, pushing things deep into her pockets and checking each one two or three times, just in case. "Which way, do you think?"

Connor came to stand beside her, eyes tracking up and down the coast. They couldn't see a great distance in either direction, not with the way that the cliffs were curving away, and up, from them.

He shrugged and gave her a rueful smile.

"Flip a coin?"

Looked like they might be useful for something after all.

* * *

Nick scrubbed at his eyes tiredly but the letters in front of him refused to come back into focus. Maybe he needed glasses or something. He was getting too damned old, too damned fast and the world was refusing to slow down and accommodate him.

It wasn't fair to think that. He was barely past forty, but then Connor would have said something like it wasn't the years but the mileage.

Connor. Damn it.

He rubbed his eyes again but his vision stayed blurred.

"Have you been here all night?"

He jerked, caught by surprise and feeling vaguely resentful once the shock had worn off. That wasn't fair either; it wasn't as though Jenny had intended to sneak up on him. She wasn't exactly quiet in those heels, especially not on the hard floors of the ARC. The click clicking of her approach should have given him plenty of advanced warning, if he'd been paying attention.

He didn't seem to be paying the kind of attention he needed to these days.

"Um, yes." He shrugged, keeping his eyes focused on his paperwork as though it would help. "I didn't want..."

"You wanted to be here in case they found something."

She settled on the desk next to him, one black-stocking clad leg swinging gently. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that her softly modulated voice was Claudia's, but Claudia's voice had never had that edge to it, like everything was worth mocking, even gently.

He still wasn't sure she wasn't mocking him but if she was, it didn't show in her face when he finally looked up and met her eyes.

"Yes," he admitted, which was big of him, of course.

Jenny didn't comment on that but nodded thoughtfully, her gaze straying down towards the large open floor of the ARC's centre of operations, where the Anomaly Detector sat mute, almost accusing in its silence.

"I take it that there's no..." She trailed off delicately and he pulled a face, smoothing it back out again when she turned back to look at him.

"No, there's... There's nothing. Not yet."

She nodded again, this time not looking away. Her face was unusually serious, for Jenny, who covered everything with a layer of mingled contempt and bravado. "Do you really think they're still alive?" And that was Jenny, refusing to pull any punches. There was a certain class of people, Nick had determined over the years, who thought nothing of asking the questions that no one else would dare. It was more than just thick skin; it was as though they believed that asking in a crisp, clear way somehow mitigated the offence.

They'd probably think they were speaking their minds. Nick tended to think that they were just lacking in bloody tact. Figured that Jenny would be one of their number; easing her way through the public with smooth and effortless charm but cutting through the rest of them like a bloody shark.

"I have to," he answered, aiming for honest rather than pissed off. "Helen... for all her faults, she survived eight years on the other side of one anomaly or another."

"I have a feeling," she observed rather acidly, "that if Helen came up against that shark thing yesterday, it would be cowering somewhere today, licking its wounds. Assuming it survived, of course."

He had to smile at that, no matter how serious the situation. "Possibly," he admitted. "If nothing else, she'd have made it entertaining."

"I'll have to make sure that the next time I'm swimming for my life from something determined to eat me that I put on a tutu. I'm sure that would be vastly entertaining as well."

"Only if you wore the tiara with it."

For a second, just a split second, it was almost like having Claudia back but then Jenny's smile turned a little shark-like itself, something Claudia had never managed. He braced himself, preparing for even more acid comments, no doubt wrapped up in the sort of artificial sweetness Jenny always seemed to manage, but she changed the subject on him rapidly. Or maybe she didn't from her perspective. She was nothing if not single minded.

It reminded him too much of Helen to be comfortable.

"So what is it, precisely, that you've found to keep yourself occupied all night?"

She nodded down towards the papers on his desk, not bothering to mask her inquisitiveness with anything. He glanced down, not entirely sure what to tell her. Not sure how much to tell her - she was still too close to Lester for his comfort, even with their momentary bonding following her close encounter with a future shark.

"I thought I'd see if I could figure out what had been happening in terms of anomalies in that area. Before the detector came online, I mean."

No one could ever have accused Jenny of being slow. Being a bull in a china shop, maybe, but never slow. She caught on fast, reaching out to move his papers around as she looked them over. He resisted the urge to slap her hand away, not entirely sure where the territorial feeling came from.

She caught on fast, but she wasn't a scientist and her field of focus was far too narrow to make her a good one anyway. After a few moments of frowning, brown eyes flickering from one document to another as she tried - and failed - to figure out the puzzle, she was back to looking back at him, her expression now exasperated.

"Would you care to enlighten me?"

He wasn't entirely sure what to say. He reached out and straightened the papers, trying to put them into the same order as they had been before Jenny had decided to meddle. It didn't help. It hadn't been much of an order anyway, no patterns leaping out to make sense to his tired brain.

Jenny was still watching him, with far more patience than he'd usually give her credit for. He owed her at least an attempt at an explanation, even if he wasn't quite sure what that explanation was going to be.

"These are measurements of the canal depth at various points," he said eventually, pointing at a chart. "It's not much. It's not exactly the kind of thing that's usually monitored, although we were lucky enough to stumble across a canal with an automated lock." At her look, he went on to elaborate. "Lots of electronic gizmos, all designed to make the life of the modern sailor a little easier. No more back breaking work, opening all of the locks by hand." He stirred the papers again with his forefinger. "There are some unusual blips in the measurements that there are, which don't seem to be explained by the locks opening at one end or the other."

She twisted around, peering at the charts with renewed interest. "When the lock opens at one end, the water comes in, and when it opens at the other end, the water goes out?"

"A little simplistic, but yes."

She raised an eyebrow, but let the 'simplistic' comment pass without comment. "And you have some depth readings that suggest the level of the water in the canal changed without either of those things happening?"

Okay, maybe she was a little less narrow in her focus then he'd given her credit for. "It seems so, yes."

"So you think that it's risen or fallen because of an anomaly under the water?"

"Yes."

She sat back and raised an eyebrow at him again, whether because she was impressed with herself and her deductive reasoning, or less impressed with him, he couldn't tell.

"Is that possible?"

He pursed his lips. "Wouldn't exactly be the first time." She kept looking at him, her expression growing more and more impatient the longer he kept looking back, at a loss for what she wanted. And then it clicked.

She hadn't been there. Not in this world, this reality, as Connor had occasionally referred to it.

Connor had been fond - **was** fond - of those little turns of phrase.

"We had... a mosasaur. In a reservoir, once. And a swimming pool, as it happens." He thought that her eyebrows were actually going to get lost in her hairline at that revelation. "And a basement."

"You had a mosasaur in a basement? And what exactly is a mosasaur?"

"No. No, that was something else, but they were all along the same sort of line, and all involved water." He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the desk, ignoring her rather exasperated look, his mind ticking over. It was possible, he supposed, that there was a similar sort of scenario here. More than one anomaly, opening at different times, all along the same fault line.

It would be ironic if he and Stephen had both been right about where the anomaly was, or had been.

"You missed something," said Jenny abruptly. It startled him, dragging him away from his train of thought, and he started to pull the papers together, trying to spot what he'd missed and Jenny had seen.

"No," she said, still sounding a little impatient. "Not in there. Basements, you said. The last time, it opened in the reservoir and then in a basement."

He stared blankly at her, waiting for her to get to the point and rather surprised that she'd been listening, and she rolled her eyes. "Perhaps one of us should be talking to the local builders again? That area is ripe for development, lots of government grants going on to try and encourage industry back, and failing that, anything else that will put jobs on the map and the government in the good books. Someone else might be having some mysterious flooding that they'd like to complain about."

She'd more than earned the smug look she gave him. "Jenny," he said slowly, "I think I could kiss you."

She snorted. "I think my fianc might have something to say about that. But why don't you keep... looking at your water levels, while I go and do what I do best, hmm?"

He resisted the urge to make a smart remark. It wasn't Jenny's fault that she was so like Claudia and yet so different, in all of the ways that mattered. Instead he contented himself with a simple, and heart-felt, "Thank you."

The smile she gave him this time was genuine, lacking the brittle patina of her other interactions. "We'll get them back, you know," she said, although he couldn't tell whether she really, truly believed that or whether she was simply so used to telling people what she thought they needed to hear, what they wanted to hear, that she didn't even recognise when she'd gone into PR mode. She wasn't the sort to pat him comfortingly on the hand, though, which was a huge relief, and she simply contented herself with another nod in his direction before striding off purposely to do whatever it was that she did so well.

"Jenny?"

He stopped her before she was out of the door, and she looked back at him curiously. He wasn't even sure what he'd been about to say, but at least this time it had been the right name he'd called.

"Have you seen Stephen anywhere?"

He half expected her to come up with a smart remark of her own, some comment about not being Stephen's babysitter or some such, but perhaps at the moment, given that they'd lost - temporarily misplaced - the two junior members of their team, that might be considered to have been in too bad taste by someone of Jenny's background. Instead she tilted her head and gave his question some thought.

"He said something about Abby's lizards?" she said eventually, her voice rising at the end as though she couldn't quite believe that that had actually been what Stephen had been talking about. Nick nodded, more to confirm that, yes, Abby did have lizards than to confirm that Stephen would be dealing with them.

"What about them?" he asked, vague and uneasy suspicions forming in his mind. He didn't want to give voice to them, not yet.

Jenny shrugged, apparently already losing interest in the conversation, her mind obviously more focused on schmoozing the local pool of gentlemen builders. "Something about bringing them into the ARC, I think."

And then she was gone, one neatly manicured hand waving vaguely over her shoulder as she metaphorically girded her loins and headed off into battle.

Nick was left staring down at the scribbled pieces of paper, the charts and the calculations that seemed, at the moment, to hold his hopes. If Stephen...

If Stephen was already bringing Rex and the rest of Abby's pets into the ARC, where they could be looked after, didn't that mean that while Nick himself was clinging to whatever he could, whatever hope there was that they'd get Abby and Connor back, both of them, safe and sound, that Stephen had already given up?

* * *

The coin flip had them heading further away from the anomaly site, in the direction they'd headed the night before, when they'd been searching for something, anything that could pass for shelter.

Abby couldn't say she was entirely comfortable with that, but there was no obvious source of water - not drinking water at any rate - where they'd come through. Just rocks and spray and prehistoric mutant walruses who had, with the rising of the sun, started to stir, rending the air with their barks and moans. Under the water, they'd sounded almost melodic, like the old sailors' tales of sirens with their mournful songs. Out of the water, though, they were completely different, as harsh and treacherous as the terrain, full of violence and fury. Even now, threatening barks and the sounds of fighting drifted towards them, loud enough to carry even over the crashing of the waves. She shivered, suddenly happy to be heading the way they were, away from those blubbery nightmares.

She'd be happier, of course, if she could be sure that they weren't heading towards something worse.

Connor dropped the last rock with a grunt, nudging it into place with his foot and glancing over at her, searching for her approval. She mustered up a smile for him from somewhere, giving his handiwork a once over.

"Think it's far enough back from the tidal region?"

She glanced around, finding no evidence of watermarks or seaweed - or what passed for it - and nodded, turning her attention back to the rather crude arrow that Connor had formed out of by plucking rocks from the shore and settling them here, dark against the paler rocks that formed the cliffs.

"It should be okay," she said, shoving her hands further into her pockets. This time it was a comfort thing rather than because she was cold. If anything, the day was growing uncomfortably warm, even here where the ocean spray, carried in by the offshore winds, cooled things down.

She'd pulled her hood up, shielding the top of her head and her neck from the worst of the sun. Connor was going to burn. There wasn't a lot she could do about that, not when he'd, for once, not worn his hat before he'd followed her. That was typical of their luck; the one occasion when it might have served its purpose - a purpose other than one of simply being a Connorism - and he'd left it behind.

They'd have to stay in the shade as much as they could and hope that when Cutter and the others finally caught up with them, they'd brought the After Sun.

"Ready?"

Connor's question caught her off guard. He was watching her again, his face still and serious, and it took a moment for her to find her smile, hiding as it was deep down inside her behind the fear and the despair, and pull it out again for him.

"Sure."

His mouth twitched, a half hearted smile of his own, and then he turned, trudging up the shore in the direction the coin toss had picked for them. After a moment she started after him, hurrying her first few steps until they were walking together, side by side. She had to fight the urge to reach out and catch hold of his hand - another comfort thing. Normally it would all be a little bit too Hansel and Gretel for her tastes but 'normal' didn't seem to count here.

However, she couldn't resist the urge to glance back over her shoulder, just to catch a last glimpse of the arrow pointing out the direction they were heading. She could only hope that their trail of breadcrumbs lasted a little longer than Hansel and Gretel's had. And that there was nothing lurking at the end of the path that wanted to eat them.

* * *

"Are ye giving up?"

As conversational openers went, it wasn't exactly the best one to go for, and Nick didn't need the sudden wary look that entered into Stephen's eye to tell him that. The other man didn't answer his question straight away, which did nothing to soothe Nick's ire. Instead Stephen straightened up slowly, wiping his hands on the cloth he held as he watched Nick, his expression giving nothing away.

It was disconcerting to be given that once over by Stephen; disconcerting and infuriating.

He didn't know how he held his temper in check but he managed, even if his fists clenched and unclenched convulsively by his sides. He doubted Stephen missed it, but still Stephen's calm mask gave nothing away.

But in the end it was Stephen who broke eye contact first, tossing the cloth to one side and folding his arms across his chest. It was clearly a defensive move - even Nick recognised it as such - but it didn't help to soothe his temper. Much.

"Of course I'm not giving up," Stephen said finally, watching one of the lizards move around its terrarium rather than meeting Nick's eyes. "But who knows how long Abby and Connor are going to be gone -"

"We're getting them back." He was spoiling for a fight but once again, Stephen wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. Not this time.

"I know." He hesitated, his gaze finally moving from the terrarium to Nick. "I'm just trying to be practical."

"Practical."

It didn't come out as a question and Stephen's eyes narrowed slightly. He still seemed unwilling to start something and that irritated Nick too, like Stephen thought that he needed to be humoured.

It wasn't fair of him, but then being fair never seemed to get him anywhere these days.

"We're getting Abby and Connor back. Whatever we have to do -"

"And what would that be?" It seemed that this time he'd hit a nerve; Stephen finally moved, his arms dropping down to his sides as he stepped forwards, moving into Nick's personal space, closer than he'd been for weeks. That easy camaraderie they'd once shared had gone, and Nick didn't miss it, not at the moment. "Have you finally figured out what causes the anomalies? No? What about how to create one, Cutter? Have you figured that out?"

Nick took a step too, moving in until they were only inches apart, the air between them bristling with everything neither of them were saying, all those festering little resentments on both side that seemed to have sprung up in the wake of Helen's revelation. But maybe Nick was wrong about that. Maybe this wasn't new, not in this through the looking glass universe. Maybe he and Stephen had always rubbed up against each other instead of rubbing alongside each other with the ease of familiarity.

"The anomaly opened and closed several times. We know that. We've got the readings that **prove** that, taken from the detector that Connor built. Connor, you know? The man we've got on the other side of that anomaly and we are **not** giving up on him. On either of them. Have you figured that out yet, Stephen?"

Stephen's eyes flashed dangerously and his voice dropped, but stayed hard. "There's a hell of a difference between giving up and accepting that there are things you can't change."

"And what does that mean?"

Stephen huffed, the anger draining from his eyes; it left something even harder in its wake. "I want to believe that Abby and Connor are both going to walk back through the anomaly any minute. Maybe they will. Maybe it will be tomorrow. Maybe next week. Who knows? I don't, and neither do you."

"So... so you're just going to what? Sit here and wait for it to happen? Wait and feed Abby's pets?"

He didn't know if it was something in his face, something in his voice, but Stephen took a step back, disengaging from him. There was exasperation in the other man's face, but it wasn't tinged with affection this time, not the way it might have been once. Instead, Stephen just looked tired, as tired as Nick felt, and Nick felt a sudden twinge of guilt about that, about making things harder for Stephen.

He needed to remember that Stephen had never been very good at putting things out there, at showing how he felt. He never had been, holding himself separate on some level from the things that had gone on around him. He'd known the man eight years or so, as a friend, maybe nine or ten if you counted the time Stephen had been Helen's student, on the periphery of the life he'd shared with his wife.

He'd just never known he'd shared his wife.

"Would you prefer it," Stephen asked dryly, "if I let them starve?" He folded his arms again, and leant back against the workbench, eyeing Nick over the top of them.

There was no comeback to that and Nick gave up, rubbing his eyes tiredly, the fight draining out of him as rapidly as it had in the warehouse, when Lester had wrong-footed him.

"It... it just feels like giving up, Stephen."

"Well, it's not." Stephen had softened his voice. "It's just... being practical. Let's face it, Nick. For all that I would love to charge in and drag Connor and Abby back to safety, it's not going to happen until that anomaly reopens."

"Which it will." Nick wouldn't let go of that point. Couldn't.

Stephen didn't argue. He just nodded seriously, his eyes now focused on Nick's face, not even leaving it when Rex chirruped behind him curiously, head tilted and also watching Nick, almost as though he knew what was going on. It was a rather ridiculous thought when you considered his cranial capacity.

Stephen shifted slightly against the workbench, the sound dragging Nick's attention back to him.

"Lizards... you know lizards can survive a few days without food."

Stephen's mouth twitched but there was no real humour in it, just a rueful acceptance of Nick's foibles, including, apparently, his inability to let anything go.

"Yes. But do you know when Abby last fed them? Personally, I'd rather not take the risk. She's small, but I'm pretty sure she'd pack a mean punch."

As an attempt at humour, it fell a little flat. Nick rubbed at his face again, the whiskers scratchy against his palms. "If the worst comes to the worst," he said, "they'll find their own way home." That may have been more to reassure himself than Stephen, who, once again, was giving nothing away. "They're smart and they're resourceful, and they'll find their way home. After all, Helen did."

Stephen snorted. "It took Helen eight years to find her way home."

"That's because it was Helen." He tried - and failed - to keep the edge out of his voice, and Stephen's look grew watchful and wary again. "She was having too much fun messing around in time to think about anything - or anyone - else."

Stephen's expression didn't change but he didn't disagree. He couldn't. That was probably why he let Rex distract him this time, turning away from Nick to feed the _Coelurosauravus_ with a small sliver of apple, watching Rex nudge it around with his snout before taking a bite. Only then did he turn back to face Nick, his expression still smooth and bland and giving nothing away.

Nick tried a smile on for size. It didn't fit, uneasy on his mouth and sliding away at the edges. "Let's just hope they stay out of trouble, yeah? Don't want them walking into anything that they should be running away from."

Stephen's mouth twitched. "Think that's likely?"

"With those two?" Nick rolled his shoulders, feeling the muscles twinge, the tension tight throughout his whole body. He needed sleep, food. Maybe even a beer or two. He needed Connor and Abby back, even if they were bickering the way they had been for the last couple of weeks. "Who knows? We can hope though, yeah?"

Yeah. They could hope.

It was all they had.

* * *

The rain hit again, two or so hours after they'd set off. There was nothing gentle about it this time - it was loud and furious, utterly terrifying. Abby would have traded anything right then for what little shelter their not-quite cave had offered them. Anything was better than being stranded out in the open, nothing to shelter under and very little to shelter behind.

They did what they could, which wasn't much, crouching behind the largest of the scattered boulders on the shore. But it was useless to crouch behind something when the rain came down from the sky in sheets.

She closed her eyes and pressed closer to the little shelter she could rely upon - Connor. He was as soaked as she was, cold and shivering, but when she buried her face in the wet fabric of his jacket collar he wrapped his arms around her, tight, holding her steady against the raging storm. The rain pounded against her head and shoulders, stinging against her skin, and her fingers were frozen and nerveless. She could barely feel where they gripped at his shirt.

Another streak of lightning tore across the sky, and the whole world around them flashed white, bright and painful. There was no time to process that, no time to block out the aftermath, before the thunder was upon them, a solid wall of sound that rolled over them, pushing their bodies into the rock.

Connor was saying something but she couldn't make it out, not in the driving rain and with her ears still ringing. At least, she thought he was saying something - his lips moved against her wet skin, the sodden tendrils of his hair sticking to her face as she turned her head. She couldn't hear him, couldn't answer him. All she could do was tighten her grip and feel his grip tighten in return.

It wasn't enough. She left go of his shirt and slid her arms around his waist instead, pushing her body into his and ignoring the way that the buttons of his jacket cut into the skin of her chest. He was trembling - they both were - but the arms he had around her tightened anyway, pulling her closer clumsily. It was as close as she was going to get to comfort and it was Connor, which meant it came pretty close.

She closed her eyes and held on tight to him, waiting for the storm to end.


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 3**

They dimmed the lights of the ARC at night. Nick hadn't realised that before. He'd worked late, sure. More than once. And yet he'd never been here this late - this early - at least not without an active anomaly to deal with. It was odd to think that on those occasions, someone had come ahead and metaphorically put the kettle on, waiting for him and the rest of his team to turn up.

Now he was metaphorically keeping that kettle on for them, just in case the rest of his team managed to find their own way home.

He had no idea where Stephen had gone to in the wake of their argument. There was no sign of him as he trudged down the seemingly endless white corridors until he reached the glass door labelled 'Animal Research'. It was deserted here too, the lab assistants having gone home for the night. He pushed it open, and the lights came on automatically, stark and white, and he blinked, clearing his vision.

The room was large: clean and clinical in a way that seemed to have no relation to the cluttered, battered labs at the university. It was all cold still, white walls, empty and barren. The shark they'd captured - the one Stephen had shot saving Jenny's life - was lying on one of the large autopsy tables. The research team had already started to examine it in more detail than he'd managed when his focus had been on Lucian's fate; its guts were spread neatly out around it, some parts of them already tagged with tentative comparative markers, based on the schematics of similar modern species, which were neatly pinned to the wall around the room.

He paused for a moment as he passed it, trying to imagine a world that produced such marvellous, terrible things, things that had teeth in their tongues. A world so savage and hostile that the creatures that inhabited needed those things, an extra edge in an ocean that must be filled with teeth to make that necessary.

A world that Abby and Connor were now trapped in.

He told himself that the shiver that went through him was simply because they kept the place too damned cold, but at least that meant that the bloody thing didn't stink.

It grew warmer when he moved to the area at the back, behind another door where they kept the cages for any live specimens they might capture. The cages ranged in size from the small to the bloody huge and he hoped to God they never had to use the bloody huge ones to store anything living and probably - knowing their luck so far - incredibly pissed off at being caught.

This room wasn't empty of the living, although, at the moment, there was only one prehistoric specimen in resident, one who was being kept company by his more modern relations.

"Hey, Rex."

He kept his voice low. It was superstitious, perhaps, but the area did feel like a hospital this early in the morning. Or maybe a morgue, one for creatures long dead and those not yet even thought of.

He had no idea if Rex recognised him but the small reptile tilted his head for a moment, almost as though he were considering Nick's appearance and what it meant, and then chittered at him. It was an oddly subdued sound. Nick had no idea if that was because the little creature missed Abby or whether he, too, had been affected by the strange sombre air of the ARC after hours.

He absentmindedly pushed a piece of apple through the bars for Rex to munch on before crouching down until he was as close to eye level as he could manage. Rex met his gaze, oddly serious for something so small and green.

"You miss her, too, don't you?" This time he pushed a piece of orange through, just for a bit of variety, but Rex seemed disinterested in that, too, still focused on watching Nick. It would be nice to think he was listening, but it was probably simply wariness for an unknown entity. "Miss both of them, I suppose. I bet they were good flatmates. Fed you on time and played with you and kept you entertained."

Maybe he was going crazy, talking to a prehistoric lizard like it understood him. He rubbed at his eyes again, tiredly, and swayed on his feet as he fought to keep his balance.

"We'll get them back, Rex, I promise."

This time Rex's gaze moved from him, his head tilting again and another soft chitter escaping him. Nick didn't turn his head until Stephen's shadow fell over him and a cup of coffee was lowered unceremoniously down to his level.

When he did look up, half torn between apologising for his outburst earlier and ignoring it and moving on, Stephen's gaze was as steady and unyielding as Rex's had been. He held it for long moments and in the end it was Stephen who looked away, his eyes tracking Rex's movements as the _Coelurosauravus_ took a tentative few flaps across his cage to land on the sidebars, gripping them tightly with his curved toes and craning his neck to get a better look at them.

"Yeah, Rex," Stephen said, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep and maybe something more. "We'll get them back."

* * *

Water was still a pressing issue, although the storm had at least bought them some time. When its fury had spent itself, they'd straightened up, dazed, with fingers numb from the tension and clothes and hair dripping wet, and all around them had been puddles, formed in the pitted rocks.

She'd splashed in puddles like this when she was six and had Wellington boots shaped like ladybirds. She didn't remember drinking out of puddles before - and her Mum would have had a fit - but there could be no such qualms here. They'd lapped them up eagerly, manners forgotten in the rush to wet parched throats, scooping up what they could with cupped hands and bringing them to their mouths until the water ran down their chins and she'd thought they'd burst.

It had quenched their first but it hadn't been enough to ease their fears, at least not her fears and probably not Connor's. She could read him easily enough, which is why she hadn't been surprised when he'd taken his jacket off and soaked it in the last puddle they could find, glancing at her sheepishly, his face burning with more than the sun.

"Smart idea," she'd said, her voice still sounding too croaky, and he'd given her a smile that was still sheepish but also Connor.

They hadn't got far before night had started to fall again, and this time they'd found a cave that probably deserved the name, huddling together in the back of it like frightened sheep while lightning again tore across the sky, without the rain to make it worthwhile. Instead, they'd had to suck their next drink out of the fabric of Connor's wet jacket, which had been gritty and foul. There'd been a weird sense of embarrassment about it, like she was doing something filthy, something her mother wouldn't approve of, although her mother didn't approve of much it seemed. She could picture it, her Mam, saying in an outraged tone, "You sucked his **what**?" It should be funny, and under other circumstances might have been, but all she'd felt was that sense of shame.

She hadn't shared that with Connor, just turned her face away from him, closed her eyes and tried not to lose any of that hard won moisture to anything as stupid as tears. Eventually, she'd managed to sleep, conscious of his form, silhouetted against the stars that were brighter than she was used to - bright and strange.

They moved on again when the sun rose, and the day only grew hotter the more they trudged along the shoreline, trying to stay away far enough from the water to avoid those creatures. She could hear them sometimes though, even when she couldn't see them, the mournful melodies drifting up towards them, muffled by the water and the rocks.

The sounds still made her shudder, in spite of the heat.

There seemed to be no way up away from the beach - the cliffs rose above them, pale and severe, burning blindingly bright in the sun. She added sunglasses to her mental list of things to always, always be taken with her to an anomaly site along with a really big knife, some sunscreen and water.

Lots and lots of water.

She stumbled again, and Connor caught her, his fingers closing firmly around her arm. She'd have bruises there, to go with the blisters on her feet and Connor's incipient sunburn. They were both tired, both clumsy and sooner or later one of them was going to take a header into the sea. As long as they did that when they were close to the shore rather than clambering over the rocks higher up, pushed upwards by the fact that there was no way through lower down. If they fell from up there... well, it wasn't like there was a nearby A&E Department to put them right.

It was starting to scare her, how far they were moving from the original anomaly site. Their pace was slow, but even so, there was no guarantee that the route back would be any quicker. Even if the anomaly reopened, surely they'd never make it back before it closed. And if anyone else made it through behind them, tried to follow...

She glanced back over her shoulder but any gleam from the anomaly would have been lost in the bright garish sunlight, reflected from the rocks.

If anyone tried to follow, they may not reach them in time. May even be trapped with them, or worse, much worse.

They might give up on them entirely.

She and Connor still stopped occasionally, the pair of them working together to fashion something like an arrow where they could - where there were darker rocks on the shoreline and a flat place on the rocks they were scrambling over where they could lay them out. She wasn't sure it would help, but it was better than nothing. At least they were doing **something** beyond just looking to their immediate survival.

She wasn't sure how long their markers would last - it didn't look like the water reached up this far, not any more, but it obviously had in the past. Every so often they passed caves, eaten into the cliff face by the waves at some point, but they were dry now, empty and deserted. That was something to be thankful for, and she made a mental note of each and everyone just in case the storms that seemed to lurk constantly on the horizon came closer. She had no wish to relive the previous day's storm, trapped out in the open with nowhere to run.

So far, however, they had stayed on the horizon, but even from here she could see the lightning streaking across the sky and hear the thunder as it rumbled towards them. It mingled with the sounds of the waves until sometimes it was like being hit by a never ending wall of white noise.

None of it helped the headache that threatened to split the back of her skull, brought on by the heat and the dehydration.

She stumbled again, and this time Connor reached out too late to catch her. She fell to her knees, the jar causing her teeth to catch her tongue and she tasted blood. Just another ache to add to the many.

Connor dragged her to her feet, only drawing his hands away reluctantly when she pulled away, angry more with herself and her clumsiness than she was with him. He took a couple of steps back and swayed on his feet, almost stumbling himself.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," she snapped, brushing the sand from her knees, more so that she didn't have to look at him than because it made her any less dirty. "How long do you think we should head in this direction before we head back? It's already been a day, Connor."

That was snappish of her too, but he didn't take offence at it, at least not as far as she could see. Instead, he glanced up and down the coast, as though that was going to help.

"Dunno." Well, that was helpful. "I mean, even if we head back now, there's no guarantee that we're going to find any water in the other direction. At least not that we can drink." He looked out over the ocean, his eyes scrunched up against the sun. "And we don't know if there'll be more rain again. There wasn't last night, even with the fireworks display."

"Water, water everywhere," she observed ruefully, moving over to stand next to him. Again, she had to fight the urge just to reach out and grab a hold of his hand, a mute apology for taking it out on him, all the fear and the panic she was drowning in.

"I dunno about that either," he said, seeming oblivious to her dilemma. His eyes were scanning the horizon but when Abby looked out over it there didn't seem to be anything that could have caught his attention.

"I'm pretty sure that drinking sea water is bad, Connor." Sometimes it paid to spell things out to him.

He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe in our time, yeah." 'Our time'. How weird was it to think in terms like that?

She frowned, peering out at the ocean again, still not seeing what he was. Sometimes he wished he'd spell things out to her given the convoluted twists and turns his brain took sometimes. There was probably some sci-fi reference she was missing.

He glanced at her and seemed - for once - to pick up on her confusion.

"My mum used to take us to the seaside when we were little." Okay, still not helpful. "We used to go rock pooling with her, you know? She liked that. So did I. It was... fun."

The look he gave her was a little bashful and Abby couldn't help giving him a little smile in return, not just because of her own childhood memories - living on an island had some advantages - but because she could just picture Connor as a child, crouched over some rock pool or other, poking around in the seaweed fringes for hermit crabs.

He nodded at her, obviously taking it as read that she knew exactly what he was talking about. "Well, you know when the tide had gone out, and it was sunny? And the rock pools started to disappear?"

"Yeah." The smile she gave him this time was a little more rueful. "Gotta be tough to live in a rock pool, with all those shifts in temperature and salinity." Maybe they should take lessons.

"They left salt behind."

Now he'd lost her again. "Course they did, Connor. And your point?"

"You see much salt around the ones here?"

She stared at him for a split second before peering down, her eyes tracking over the rocky shoreline for evidence of what he was talking about. She couldn't be sure - what had once been a rock pool and what hadn't wasn't clear - but he was right about one thing. Where there were small pockets of water left behind - from either the rain or the tide - there weren't any crystallised rings of salt around them, the way you'd expect when there had been deep rock pools but no seaweed growing around the edges, limiting evaporation. And most of yesterday's rain had evaporated even before they had stopped for the night, hadn't it? So any pools left on the shore should be sea and not rain water; salty sea water leaving salty rings behind.

Right?

She couldn't be sure and her head ached too much to think about it too much.

"You think it's safe to drink then?" Her tone was dubious and she didn't bother trying to hide it.

He shrugged again, shifting a little uncomfortably under her gaze. "I dunno. But it's something to think about. You know..." He met her gaze this time, more candid now and the look in his eyes didn't do anything to soothe her own fears. "In case it gets worse."

It might well get worse, but she wasn't going to sit around waiting for it to happen. She stared around, peering up and down the coastline much as he had while he just stood and watched her, waiting for her to make some sort of decision. She could have resented that but this was Connor. In spite of their problems recently - and she was woman enough to admit that her dislike of his girlfriend was the root of a lot of them - they made a good team. Give and take, and if she had to give this time, that was okay.

He'd followed her through an anomaly, with no thought of his own safety. He'd given her more than enough recently. More than she'd suspected, even.

"Let's head the way we were going for a little longer," she said finally, eyeing the way they'd come - and the ocean - a little uneasily. "We might find a way inland, or even a river. Especially if you're right about the salinity. Water's got to be coming from somewhere and feeding into it, right?"

He nodded, looking relieved that she'd made the decision for both of them.

"Onwards and upwards, then?"

She nodded, trying to project an air of confidence she was far from feeling. Once again, she had to fight the need to reach for his hand as they started to clamber over the rocks again, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible.

They'd find a steady and constant source of water soon. They had to. The alternative was unthinkable.

* * *

"Go home, Cutter."

Lester's cut glass tones cut through his fugue and Nick jerked upright, the world snapping into focus again.

"Go home," Lester repeated. "You're making the place look untidy and Lord knows we pay you enough to be able to afford to put a roof over your head." He seemed to consider that thought for a moment and added, "Although at London prices, it's probably not much of one."

Nick blinked at him blearily, managing to focus just in time to catch Lester indulging in his normal eye rolling.

"If the anomaly opens again..."

"If the anomaly opens again, we have a crack team of commandos on site ready to leap into action and save the day. Let's leave it to the professionals, shall we? It's what I'm paying them for. I'm paying you to be the brains of the outfit and frankly, judging by the way you look right now, I'm half expecting them to start dribbling out of your ears at any moment." The look he gave Nick was half brusque and half sympathetic, and the latter didn't sit well on Lester's face. He wasn't a man much suited to anything human in his interactions with others.

"Jenny." Bang on cue, or maybe simply responding to Lester's barking of her name, she stalked into the room, her too high heels click-clacking across the floor. Nick half expected Lester to click his fingers at her, too, like one would summoning their guard dogs, but judging by the look of hell currently residing on Jenny's face, maybe even Lester knew that there were some battles he wasn't going to win and some fights he shouldn't pick.

It didn't help that that look was currently aimed in his direction rather than Lester's.

"Why don't you escort the good Professor home? His or yours, I don't really care. Just get him off the premises before we start being hit by the Working Time Directive people, hmmm?"

He half expected Jenny to rip Lester a new one at that, but the glare stayed aimed at him.

"Look, Jenny..."

"Lester's right." Of course he was. What had Jenny called him? A great man? A great man who'd just banished him like he'd banished Connor from the dockside for making a scene. It hurt to realise that it was for the same reason - grief and loss, although Nick, at least, wasn't quite so open about his pain.

Besides, Abby and Connor weren't dead. He'd made that mistake with Helen and he wasn't making it again.

"I want to stay here, keep on working out when the anomaly might open again..."

"By snoring at your desk?" she asked sweetly. He wasn't fooled. He knew her well enough by now to know that the sweetness was just because she was scenting victory.

"I was... I don't snore."

"Yes you do. I heard you from the break room." Then her expression softened, and that was even more terrifying than the glare. Not the idea that Jenny had a softer side but the idea that Jenny thought that he needed to see it.

"Look, I promise. As soon as we have news..."

"You'll call me, I know. It's not good enough. I've got to be here. I can't... Look, I have to be doing something. You might not understand that, Claud -"

He cut himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the diatribe that was sure to follow. She surprised him, but then she'd been doing that a lot recently.

"And if that wasn't a sign that you need some sleep, I don't know what is."

"I'm not a child, to be sent to bed."

"No." And there was no softness in her tone this time; it was hard as steel and as deadly as any blade forged from it. "What you are is someone who is stupid and arrogant enough to put everyone else at risk because you don't trust anyone else to do their jobs."

The words - and the tone they were delivered in, all brute force and no tact - were enough to stop him in his tracks. The anger would come once the shock had worn off - was already building in fact - but she cut him off at the knees there, too.

"I get that you want to do something, but even if you did figure out whether the anomaly is going to open again, and even if you figured out roughly when, we're still reliant on the detector to tell us the exact moment when it does - the detector and the men on the ground, who are watching and waiting and a damned sight better at both of those things than you are. Face it, Cutter. Even if a miracle happened and the anomaly opened in the next five minutes, you're in no fit state to go through it. You need sleep and probably a hell of a lot of coffee after that to function, and frankly you need a shower as well. So for once in your stubborn, unbelievably arrogant life, just do what you're told."

He blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again, finally settling on, "Do you ever stop bossing people about?"

Her eyes narrowed dangerously and one hand rose from her side, the perfectly manicured nail pointing towards the door in a way that left no doubt as to what she wanted.

"No. I'm very good at it. So let me tell you how this is going to play out. You are walking out of that door. I am then going to drive you home and if you give me any trouble I won't even stop before I throw you out at the other end. I suspect it will make things a little more difficult for you to play the heroic martyr with gravel rash on your hands and knees so don't think for one second that I won't make good on my threat. Frankly, I don't want to hear it any more. We have... temporarily mislaid two members of our team. But - as you keep repeating - we **are** going to get them back. Personally, I'd like to think that by the time we do, we aren't short another team member because Stephen and I have decided to beat you into submission and hide the body somewhere. Do you understand me?"

It was an interesting choice of words for Jenny. 'Our team'. He stared at her for a long moment, trying not to let the inner debate he was having about whether or not to risk more of her wrath show on his face.

"Okay," he said eventually. "But if there's any sign..."

She rolled her eyes, looking scarily like Lester for a moment. Perhaps on this world there was a finishing school somewhere that churned them all out like this, all cultured tones and smart arse commentary.

"If there is any sign, we will call you. **Provided**," and she snapped the word out, her lower lip jutting out afterwards pugnaciously, "that you do what you are told to do right now." And then her voice softened again, just to deliver the killer blow.

"We need you to be fit and ready for when we have to bring them home, okay?"

It would be easier to buy if he hadn't watched her turn on the charm innumerable times before now, using it to persuade those members of the public she hadn't already terrified into submission to do exactly what she wanted them to do. But even if she was using her PR charm voice, she'd made her stance on this one perfectly clear. The delivery may have rung a little false but the message rang true.

"Fine," he said, finally capitulating. "I will get some sleep. And a shower. As long as it's understood that the second - the **second**, Jenny - that there is any news, I'm informed."

She rolled her eyes again. "I'm afraid that once again you've mistaken me for your secretary, but I'll make sure that I call you - haul you out of bed if need be - if it's necessary. Deal?"

He half expected her to hold out her hand for him to shake on it but instead she folded her arms, glaring at him again over the top of them, and he swallowed a tired smile, giving her a nod.

"Lead on, MacDuff," he said.

"It's lay on, actually. But I get the drift."

Of course she did.

He swallowed down another smile but, for once, he followed where she led without any more argument.

* * *

It was another two hours, by Abby's admittedly random reckoning, that they finally found what looked like it could be a path up the cliff face, at least one that wouldn't result in them breaking their necks. It took them another hour or so to clamber their way up it, and she had to admit she was surprised that neither of them were particularly out of breath by the time they'd reached the top. Maybe Connor had made good on his threat to go to the gym.

But when they did reach the top, the sight that stretched in front of her did what the climb couldn't and took her breath away. She'd never seen anything like it. Couldn't imagine anything like it, not on their Earth, although maybe there were vistas like this in places she'd never got around to visit. The earth curved down towards a huge basin, the sides carpeted in what looked like grassland, and then...

"Wow," said Connor, coming up to stand beside her. She glanced sideways at him, tracing the line of his profile with her eyes. His nose was red from the sun, and his lips had started to crack, especially at the corners where he kept licking at them convulsively, trying to keep them moist when the heat and the spray were conspiring against them.

She wasn't much better - she'd been protected a little more from the sun thanks to the hood of her sweatshirt, but her feet were sore and blistered and her fingers scratched and bleeding from the climb.

"That's..."

He trailed off, for once shocked into silence.

"Yeah." It kind of summed it up really.

"Well," said Connor eventually. "There's obviously water down there." He glanced over at her before his eyes were drawn back to the sight laid out in front of them. "A lot of it."

"Yeah," she said, staring down at the forest that stretched out across the horizon as far as the eye could see; never ending rolling shades of green for mile after mile after mile. If it was a basin, she couldn't see the other side - had no idea if there were cliffs beyond the forest or whether the one they were standing on was a freak of geology, pushed up by volcanic activity or by the shift of tectonic plates on the sea floor.

And to the east of them, their cliffs finally folded down towards the sea, smoothing out into yet more greenery, darker this time. She made a half turn, squinting to focus and thought that the water down there might be darker too, silt maybe, pouring out into the sea and forming a delta. Which meant that those trees may be this era's equivalent of a mangrove. Which meant, in turn, a river to carry the life giving nutrients down into the bay. If there was one, she couldn't spot it, couldn't tell where the river ended and the sea began, but it was more hope than they'd had before.

She turned back towards the carpet of greenery, eyes watering a little from the sun. There was other life down there too; as she watched, small black dots pin-wheeled up from the forest canopy, a flock of birds taking flight, although their path was oddly erratic and they moved like no flock she'd ever seen. But where there were birds there was water and there was meat and maybe even eggs, depending on the season.

And where there were those things, there was a chance that she and Connor would make it through until they could make it home.

Feeling more confident, she finally started down the slope, Connor following and keeping pace with her, his footsteps sending up little clouds of dust as he angled downwards.

This time she did catch hold of his hand and held it all the way down.

**Day 4**

Nick dreamed, although it was the last thing he wanted, needed. The exhaustion should have dragged him down into the dark depths of slumber, far beyond the reach of nightmares but instead, he dreamt of something else dragging him down, down into the murky depths as the water closed over his head.

His arms floated above him, wavering in the dim light that grew more distant, fading until it was nothing but shades of silver and green.

And all around him they sang, the sorrowful song of the sea while he sank down, down, down.

He woke with a gasp, fingers clutching the sheet as he tried to claw his way back up to the light, tried to breathe through lungs that...

Weren't filled with water. He took a deep breath, then another, his heart pounding a rapid rhythm in his chest, so fast it came close to pain.

When he looked at his alarm clock, it read 03:00, the light shining greenly in the dark and making his stomach lurch again until he could almost taste salt water on his tongue.

He kicked off the covers. There'd be no more sleep tonight, and he'd stayed away from the ARC for a whole six hours. Surely that would be enough to keep Jenny and Lester silent. And if it didn't, tough shit.

But he took the time to shower again before he left the house, letting the warm water wash away the night sweats, letting it soak into him until the ice melted from his veins.

He tried not to listen to the melody of the water as it fell.

* * *

It took them a lot longer to reach the edges of the forest than she'd figured it would, her sense of distance distorted by the sun and by the never ending vista of green. They had to watch each step down, the footing on this side of the escarpment more treacherous, with the scree threatening to shift under each step.

They'd stopped at the foot, even though there was a good hour or so of light left, and came the closest they had to an argument on this side of the anomaly. Connor had wanted to push on, cross the grassland to try and reach the forest before nightfall, or just after if they could, where there might be water, food even. She understood where he was coming from - the hunger was a tight, painful knot in her belly, growing worse with each step, and her lips were cracking again, the blood sharp and salty against her tongue when she licked to moisten them. But all she could think of was the lions that haunted the savannahs of Africa, lying in the long grass, just waiting for something to wander by. The land here was more like scrub, but it wasn't even - it rolled gently and each rise, each clump of taller grass, could hide something they'd never see in the dark, at least not until it was too late.

She was exhausted - hungry and scared and aching - and Connor wasn't fairing any better. His jacket was slung over his shoulders, almost like a scarf, dry as a bone now. His cheeks were starting to hollow out and there were dark bags under his eyes, his gaze dull and his skin dry and peeling over his nose, where the sun had caught.

Everything was wrong, like it had taken a sharp step to the left and pushed her off balance. The ease of her interactions with Connor had just gone and she wanted it back. It wasn't all because of where they were and the heat and the thirst and the hunger. There was something else lurking at the edges, the kind of thing that you caught out of the corner of your eye as you turned your head.

She knew what it was - the elephant in the room, the thing they weren't talking about. The many things they weren't talking about, like the fact that Connor had a girlfriend and she'd had a crush on Stephen and everything was wrong and...

And Connor loved her, as in really loved her and as more than just a mate. She thought. She was sure that had been what he'd meant.

Hadn't it?

So everything was wrong, and that, more than anything, was what had laced her words with a venom she didn't have the energy to feel otherwise, throwing the words out until Connor had moved away from her, turning away from her and sitting down, the line of his back stiff and resentful, an echo of everything he'd said and everything he hadn't.

They stayed there, hidden in the boulders that had fallen from the escarpment over the millennia since it had risen, and they barely spoke all night, any conversation limited to variations on, "It's your turn to watch," and, "Fine." She couldn't sleep even when it was Connor's turn to watch, too scared of the things that might lurk out in the darkness and too angry at Connor for not understanding that - and herself for not letting it go. She spent most of the night staring at his back and aching for things she couldn't quite pin down let alone say out loud.

It was easier when day broke, the sun rising to the east of them, over the sea. They still didn't talk about it but at least they were back to being polite, skirting around all of the elephants in the room, it seemed. The grassland proved easy to cross - no sign of herds of grazers or anything that stalked them - and she half expected an 'I told you so' from Connor, but he was eerily silent on that point too.

But it was still wrong, both this world and the silence between her and Connor. When they finally approached the forest, grew close enough to differentiate the trees from the wood, it shouldn't have been a surprise that that was wrong too. The sense of alienation that had been nagging at her, worrying around the edges since the second she'd been yanked through the anomaly, grew stronger, until it was almost as oppressive as the heat.

She'd expected a rainforest, somehow, maybe just because of the size of it, or the heat and the storms that seemed to rage every night. She'd expected trees that towered over them and bright birds calling from the canopy, water dripping down from broad leaves and the air to be close and humid. But just like the flocks they'd spied from the cliffs, there had been something off about the forest as they approached, something just not quite right about the picture that it had presented.

She'd expected a forest of trees, stretching up into the sky. What she got was a forest full of giant ferns that towered over the pair of them, branching out, fronds twisted and curling upwards until they blocked out the sun.

"Oh... wow."

It wasn't exactly the turn of phrase she was thinking - oh shit would have been closer to the mark - but she could appreciate the sentiment anyway. When she turned to look at Connor, his face was rapt. It was amazing, the way that he could still find wonder in this when he was exhausted and filthy, dehydrated and hungry. He took a step closer, leaning in to examine it, and she had to fight the urge to grab him, yank him back. There were shadows lurking behind the ferns, deeper into the forest. Places where things could hide and when she didn't pull him back, and he took one, then two steps into the dark, she had to fight back the superstitious shiver that shook her, her hindbrain taking over for a moment and bringing back ancestral memories of cowering in the dark from the things with teeth and claws.

She took a step after him, her eyes darting warily about, constantly searching for any sign of movement, of danger, and she had to suppress another shudder, this time because the air under the canopy was noticeably cooler than it had been outside.

"Do you think there are still trees somewhere?" Connor's voice drifted back to her, sounding ethereal in the gloom. "I mean, real trees rather than these ferns?"

She opened her mouth but had to swallow before she could answer him, her throat tight with that same ancestral fear. "Maybe. I mean, this can't be the only continent, or the only forest. There are even places on Earth where ferns still dominate, although I can't think of any this big."

"The carboniferous." Connor answered a question she hadn't asked. When she didn't say anything, he looked up at her but she couldn't quite make out his expression with the shadows falling over his face. "Huge ferns covering most of the planet. But that was before flowering plants - true flowering plants, I mean." He took a step back towards her and her knees went a little weak with relief. It also meant that he stepped into a gleam of sunlight, penetrating the canopy, which wasn't as thick here as it seemed to be further in, and now she could see his expression, a confused frown on his face, the one he got when he was trying - and failing - to figure something out. "I think, anyway" he added. "Got to say, paleobotany? Not my strong point."

She gave him a weak little smile, rubbing at her arms.

"You cold?"

"A little," she admitted, not wanting to admit the real reason for her shivers. She prided herself on being tough - tougher than Connor, and even he'd admit as much. Usually. If she let her fear rule her now, it wouldn't only be herself she was letting down. But it was difficult when something uttered a shrill cry to the right of her. She started, her heart jumping in her chest and ice water beginning to trickle down her spine.

"If... Um..." Connor's face was torn and he took another step towards her, flushing. She stared at him for a moment, confused herself at what was going through his mind, and his flush deepened. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before his hands came up to unknot the sleeves of his jacket, tied loosely around his neck and shoulders. He held it out to her with a weak smile. "Here."

She wondered if that had been what he'd originally intended but there was no way for her to ask, not without acknowledging that thing they weren't talking about. All she could do was take what was offered and give him a weak smile of her own in return.

She began to pull it on over her hooded top and took another step when something bright green and fast darted past her foot. She swore, almost tripping in her attempt to avoid it, her heart racing as she finally recognised it for what it was.

A lizard, a small one. Almost like a gecko in the shape - and speed - of it but not quite, something off about it too. Maybe it was the small spines studding its back. The form was fairly typical though, like a myriad of small lizards the world over - her world. The familiarity of that made her throat ache, spines or no.

She tracked it as it scurried through the undergrowth, all four legs moving rapidly, two by two in a typical lizard fashion. It swerved to avoid a small hole in the ground, and then, something else - something big and black and **wrong** - came out of the hole, fast and vicious, and grabbed hold of the lizard she'd been watching.

"Jesus." Connor swore in her ear even as he grabbed her and pulled her back, catching her when she stumbled. He almost fell over himself just after that, too busy concentrating on the hole in the ground to pay any attention to where his feet were going. "That... that..."

"I really hate spiders," she said weakly.

"Yeah. I never, ever want to run into something like that in the bathroom."

For some reason - some stupid, adrenaline fuelled, scared shitless reason - that made her laugh, gasping for breath until they turned into sobs. She bit it back though, forced it down while Connor watched her, his face suddenly scared. She didn't think it was the spider that had put that look on his face but it acted like a shot of cold water anyway, sobering her up. She pulled herself together, hiccupping and turning her face away so that he couldn't see the tear tracks on her grimy face.

"That... that was one hell of a big spider," she said when she could speak again. He watched her for a moment, his face still open and scared, then nodded, seeming reluctant to speak. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, finding her centre, that place of peace. When she spoke again, it was calmer, more reasonable. "Think that that's typical? I mean, do we need to keep a watch out?"

He stared at her for a moment longer before reluctantly taking his eyes off her to look around. She didn't know what he thought he'd see - the foliage was thick, the giant ferns seeming to harbour much smaller varieties around their roots. There could be anything lurking in there.

"Maybe," he said finally, his eyes tracking up to the canopy. He frowned, and pointed something out to her, his hands moving slowly, steadily to avoid attracting attention, or maybe startling something.

"Look."

As stage whispers went, Connor needed practice, but she didn't hear anything take flight. So she did as he asked, turning slowly, her heart pounding every second of the way, until she could see where he was pointing.

She didn't spot it at first, her eyes still adjusting to the dim light in the forest, and then it moved, its wings waving gently.

It was the biggest dragonfly she'd ever seen. Its wingspan was easily a foot across, as far as she could tell. Maybe even bigger. Big enough that she took another step towards Connor - a slow one this time.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Connor's voice was just a breath in her ear. "You have those mermaid-like things, and sharks that have evolved to have teeth on their tongues, and then you have these. Dragonflies and spiders, whose shape hasn't changed much in millions and millions of years. They predate the dinos, and yet here they are, still going strong now. Whenever 'now' is."

She turned her head to look at him - still slowly - and his face was fascinated again. He took a step towards them, and she grabbed hold of his t-shirt, giving him a glare that warned of retribution if he did anything stupid. More stupid than usual.

"As dragonflies go, that's really... bloody... **huge**!"

He blinked at her, either taken back by her swearing or perhaps just the vehemence of her whisper. Then he caught hold of her - his jacket - and tugged her back towards the forest edge. She resisted at first, angling their direction of travel so that they made as large a detour as possible around the spider's lair.

She had no intention of getting caught up in the 'majesty' of something that had no right to be that size and hungry as she was, she couldn't imagine eating it or anything like it - her stomach rebelled at the thought.

When they reached sunlight again, he pointed towards the clouds gathering ominously in the distance. "See that?"

"A storm's coming." Big deal. She was getting used to them - they were nothing special, not here.

"Yes. And have you noticed anything else?" He turned towards her, the look on his face expectant, but his expression rapidly fell when he finally twigged that she wasn't in the mood for guessing games. "The air. It's like... I dunno. Like you could almost get drunk on it. No, sorry. That's a really bad analogy. Like..." He waved his hands vaguely in the air and there was no mistaking his frustration at not finding the exact words. But she got it.

"It's a little weird, yeah." Weird how they got tired but seldom seemed to get out of breath.

Connor's hands fell but his eyes stayed focused on the clouds roiling on the horizon. They weren't close enough to worry about, not yet, but Connor had got her thinking.

"You think that's causing the storms? The air?"

He frowned, still not looking at her. "I think maybe, yeah. I dunno. I could be wrong, but I think that maybe the oxygen levels might be a bit higher than they are in our... back home." He shot her a look that bordered on sheepish. "It just... it was just an idea. But, you know... the plants and the huge insects. It's very like the carboniferous and the oxygen levels then were thirty, thirty-five percent. Something like that. Much higher than we have - had. That's why the insects got so big then."

She gave it some more thought, turning the idea over and over in her mind until it settled in, seemed less fantastic. It shouldn't be a surprise that this world could be more different from the one they'd left in more ways than just the creatures inhabiting it. It was too easy to think that things in their time, things they took for granted like the fact it always rained on a Bank Holiday and that they didn't really get tornados in Essex, had always been that way. That they always would be. That even less superficial things, like the composition of the atmosphere or the constellations, would stay the same over the millennia. But it made sense that given the size of the forest, there'd be more oxygen in the atmosphere. Connor was right about one thing. She may not have been a palaeontologist - her specialism ran to current creatures, or at least those that had been 'current' in their time - but even she knew that the composition of the atmosphere hadn't always been the same, changing as the face of the planet changed.

And millions of years must have passed since their time. The stars had told her that much.

Unless...

"We haven't gone back in time, have we? I mean, this **isn't** the carboniferous, is it?"

He shook his head, facing the forest once more. Once again his eyes searched among the trees and this time what he pointed out was a bird, or something similar to it, not an insect.

"Didn't have those in the carboniferous. Birds weren't going to be around for nearly two hundred million years. So even if those mermaid things did come through to our time and then we've all travelled back to much earlier, it doesn't explain them."

"So what does that mean, then?" she asked slowly. "If you're right?"

He shrugged again, shoving his fingers into his trouser pockets. "Make sure we don't build a really big fire?"

"Well, that's helpful, Connor."

"It means," he said, his voice now as slow as hers had been, "that in the short term we might find it's easier to climb and to run like we have, I think..." She nodded at him when he looked at her, seeking her confirmation that she'd experienced the same effects that he had. "But I think our bodies might adjust quickly. It'll be different when - if - we get home. Then I guess it will be like moving from sea level up to the mountains... we'll need time to adjust."

"When," she said firmly and he glanced up and met her eyes. "When, Connor. Not if." He didn't nod but he didn't look away though and she took that as a minor victory.

He shrugged. "It should be just like that - moving to a high altitude. If I'm right. I might be completely off the track, Abby. It was just a thought. It's just... it makes sense."

She considered it for a moment, turning it over and over in her mind for its relevance, and then filed it away with the other things to deal with later, to ponder to their hearts' content when they had time. There was only one thing that might need their attention now.

"Think the storms are going to be a problem?"

Another one of Connor's shrugs, one shouldered this time as he leant back on one arm, eyes still focused out onto the sky.

"Maybe," he said. "Means shelter stays up there on top of the list. From what I remember from lectures and journals, there's evidence of a lot of forest fires in the carboniferous. The atmosphere was more turbulent, lots of lightning, lots of lightning strikes. And, like I said, fires burn hotter and for longer with more oxygen in the air." He hadn't quite said, once again leaping ahead and assuming that everyone else kept up, but she got the drift.

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "And you think it will be like that here?"

He shrugged again. "Maybe."

They fell into silence for a moment and this time Connor was the one who broke it.

"What now?"

She mimicked his shrug. "We've got a forest. I'm not sure I want to venture in far, but it would be nice to find something to eat." Nice didn't even begin to cover it. "Maybe watch what the birds eat, see if there's any fruit or anything that we want to risk. Then, water. And we need somewhere we can... I don't know. Sleep. Be safe." She stole another look at him, pleased when he met her eyes seriously, no trace of the buffoon this time.

He nodded, not saying anything, and she felt a sudden surge of selfish gratitude that he was there, just accepting it all. At least for the moment. It was enough to have her edging closer, nudging him gently with her shoulder and, when he looked at her, saying, "We'll be okay, Connor."

"Yeah." He seemed to give it some thought and then gave her a small smile. "Yeah, we will. And in the meantime, we get to play Robinson Crusoe. Since we're next to the ocean, do I get to be a pirate? Or now we're closer to the forest, do I have to be Robin Hood?"

She snorted. "You only get to be a pirate if I get to be a ninja. And you're not really cut out for Robin Hood. Apart from anything else, no one to rob."

He ducked his head and gave her a sidelong grin then folded his arms, scuffing his toe in the dirt. "Want to go exploring, then? Map out our new domain?"

"Yeah, just... let's... Let's be careful, yeah? Stick close to the edge so we don't get lost." She couldn't help the pleading tone that crept into her voice, no matter what it gave away, but he didn't call her on it, not this time. He just nodded again, but this time the accompanying smile was more genuine.

"C'mon," he said, holding his hand out to her. She took it this time without question and followed him back into the dark.

* * *

Stephen and Jenny were talking quietly together in the break room when Nick walked through the door. The fact that they both stopped as soon as he entered didn't do anything to soothe his nerves, jangled as they were by lack of sleep and the nightmares he'd had when he had finally slipped under.

"What?" he asked ungraciously.

Jenny's eyebrows rose and her hip cocked the way it always did when she was about to trample over some poor sod. Stephen, in contrast, just looked vaguely amused, but it was Stephen who broke the silence first.

"I thought you were going to get some sleep," he observed mildly, bringing his coffee cup back up to his lips and eyeing Nick over the top of it.

"I did." Coffee seemed like a remarkably good idea, even the burnt sludge that they served at the ARC. The coffee machine hadn't quite worked right since Connor had cannibalised it for some part or another. Connor kept promising to give it a complete overhaul, making it even better than it had been before he'd raised it, but somehow he'd never really got around to it.

It was all Nick could do not to think that maybe now he never would.

"Any news," he asked, lacing his coffee with copious amounts of cream and sugar, just to make it drinkable. It was Stephen's turn to raise an eyebrow this time, eyeing Nick's efforts with something like distaste, but he shook his head. Nick couldn't be surprised at that but he'd had to ask anyway.

"So am I allowed to ask what you were talking about?" The coffee was just as disgusting as it always was and he pulled a face, adding another spoonful of sugar.

"Cover story," Jenny said succinctly but she - frustratingly - didn't elaborate further. Exasperated, Nick turned his attention to Stephen.

"I ran into Caroline last night," he explained. It meant nothing to Nick until Stephen added, a little pointedly, "Connor's girlfriend."

Oh. "What did you say?"

"He lied," Jenny interjected. "He was quite good at it actually." She looked suitably impressed and Nick had to swallow down the biting remark that he could almost taste on his tongue.

"Oh?" he said, waving his cup interrogatorily. The coffee slopped over the sides and down his hand. He swore, thankful that the coffee was about as hot as usual, which meant he wasn't burnt.

"I said that they'd been called away with work urgently and at short notice, which was why I was retrieving Abby's lizards."

"Did she buy it?"

Stephen shrugged. "She didn't seem to be that interested, to be honest."

He should feel for the girl, but he was too tired at the moment to feel anything but numb. "Maybe she's used to it, Connor rushing off at short notice."

"Maybe." Stephen was noncommittal on that point.

Jenny snorted inelegantly. "Maybe she's finally twigged that the pair of them are joined at the hip and is cutting her losses." Nick looked at her blankly and she rolled her eyes. "Connor and Abby."

Nick opened his mouth, possibly to argue, possibly not. He'd never quite remember which because at that moment the blare of the anomaly detector sounded throughout the ARC and his cup hit the floor, shattering.

He barely registered it, racing Stephen out of the door, Jenny close behind them even in her heels. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 5**

When the sound first rent the air, she froze, feeling Connor freeze beside her. She took a step back, bumping into him, and it brought her up short. His hand slid down her back then around to grab at her wrist as he tugged her sideways, towards the largest boulder. She resisted, frozen to the spot and not wanting to attract the attention of whatever it was that she could hear, but he tugged harder. It was easier to go than to put up a fight, especially when Connor's fingers were shaking against her skin.

She fell on to her knee, the gravel digging into her skin painfully, and then Connor's arm was around her waist, tugging her even closer to him, almost dragging her behind the cover of the rock - what little cover there was. He was craning his head, trying to see around it, see whatever it was that was making that noise and she flailed for him, sinking her fingers into the fabric of his t-shirt to try and keep his head down.

She lost the battle but nothing leapt out at him, nothing tried to tear his stupid, idiotic face off. Instead his eyes just grew wider at whatever it was he could see, the pupils blown wide and dark until thin slivers of dark brown surrounded black. She couldn't help it, no matter what the danger, couldn't leave him watching it on his own and lifted her head up until she could see, too.

There was something on the shore, something beyond the tangles of the mangroves they'd emerged from. It... there wasn't a way to describe it, even in her head, that didn't use the creatures she was familiar with as a reference even if they were long, long dead by now, as extinct as the dinosaurs. The closest she could come to thinking of it was as something halfway between a hyena and a boar: broad, ungainly shoulders and a powerful neck tapering down to a narrow waist and shorter, powerful back legs. It was ugly as hell, tusk-like protuberances jutting up from its bottom lip, glistening evilly in the sunlight.

She pressed closer to Connor, his breath coming hot and fast against her face and his fingers still digging painfully into her waist.

Whatever it was, it had cornered a Mer. She'd finally christened it that when she'd grown sick of Connor describing them as 'those mermaid things'. They were nothing like the mermaids of her childhood, nothing beautiful or romantic about them. Nothing safe.

This one wasn't safe. This was one losing, its flanks already blood stained, heaving with the effort of trying to stay out of the reach of the teeth and claws of the thing that was attacking it.

Another hideous snarl, and the thing struck again, going for the throat this time.

Abby was no stranger to nature, red in tooth and claw, but this was truly terrifying, watching something being torn apart so close to them. The wind was blowing in from the sea, rolling up the shore towards them, carrying the scent of blood mingled with the salt. It made her nauseous but at least it meant that the thing was upwind, couldn't smell them. She hoped. The idea of the thing scenting them, turning those long, sharp fangs on them, turned the blood in her veins to ice water, freezing the sweat on her skin and snatching the breath from her lungs.

She couldn't move, her fingers digging into the skin of Connor's arms, hard enough to draw blood to the surface, filling the grooves her nails had left. He didn't flinch though, his breathing now rapid and shallow, his eyes still those wide dark pools surrounded by rings of white.

She didn't know how long they were there, frozen into position, turned to stone by the fear, turned into prey by this harsh, savage world. It was long enough for the thing to eat its fill, teeth ripping at the blubber until its belly bulged obscenely large and its muzzle was bright red with blood, darker clots of blood and flesh staining its chest and paws.

Only then did it lift its head, sniffing suspiciously at the air around it, and she shrank back against Connor, barely breathing at all. Its eyes were sharp, pitiless in the ugliness of its face, but at last it turned tail, loping up the beach with its fast, ungainly stride.

She waited until the thing had disappeared into the distance, skirting around the edges of the mangroves with ease, before she pushed herself up, away from Connor. He made a grab for her, his eyes frantic, continually darting between her and where that thing had disappeared, but she slipped from his grasp easily, staying low and fixing her own eyes on the path that the predator had taken as she moved around the rock, approaching what was left of the carcass.

Connor followed her, stumbling in her wake, his fingers grabbing for her and tangling up in his jacket, the one she was still wearing. He didn't try and stop her this time though, but followed her, just seeming to want to hold on.

She knew how he felt. She only had the vaguest idea of what she was doing and it was clear that Connor was completely lost. Her brain was still numb, short circuited by fear and horror, all mixed up until she didn't know where one ended and the other began, and it made this whole nightmarish thing easier. Not being able to think. Not stopping to think.

The heavy, cloying scent of blood and the rank scent of the Mer's innards washed over them, again turning her stomach, making her head swim. But her mouth watered, a reflex she had no control over, not when she hadn't eaten properly for so long, and that just made her nausea worse. She'd have thrown up right there, on the beach, if she'd had anything but acid in her stomach. If it hadn't meant taking two steps away from Connor, steps she didn't want to - couldn't - take. As if Connor would let her, with his face frozen and stunned, just staying as close as he could to her without tripping her up.

She crouched down, examining the corpse. Connor watched her numbly like he had no idea why she was interested. It hadn't clicked for him yet but it would.

"The knife," she said. "Give me the knife, Conn."

He blanched and for a second she thought he really would throw up but he didn't, just fumbled clumsily in his pocket for his pocket knife and handed it to her without a word.

It was puny against what was left of the massive Mer's body, but she started to saw frantically at the flesh with it anyway, her attention torn between the task ahead of her and the path the predator had taken. The one it could return down at any moment.

Connor was sick then, staggering away and bracing his hands against his knees as his stomach revolted. All he seemed to bring up was bile and her own stomach protested in sympathy when she pushed the knife through to the Mer's guts and the smell rolled over her, thick and stomach churning. She could taste the gorge rising in her throat, acid on her tongue, and she fought it back, wiping the back of her hand across her lips weakly.

Connor came back though - to give him credit, he came back, standing beside her with his pale face and shaking hands. "Abby?" His voice was a harsh whisper but she couldn't let it distract her - she just had to concentrate on sawing and not thinking. "Abby?" He tugged on her - his - jacket, and that caught her attention, dragging it back to him just in time to see him sway on his feet.

For one horrible moment she thought he was going to keel over and how the hell she was supposed to carry him out of here if that thing came back...

God, if that thing came back.

But he wasn't toppling over - he was pulling at the jacket, his lips set in a thin, grim line, and it clicked, it finally clicked.

She pulled one arm out of the sleeve, switching the knife to that hand as he helped pull the jacket off the other arm and then it was on the ground as she was back to sawing.

A chunk of flesh - mottled and grey, still smeared with the Mer's blood - came loose and she stared at it for a moment, her stomach roiling, before chucking it down onto the jacket. Connor fell to his knees beside her, his face green now and his eyes a little crazy. He took a deep breath - she could hear it - and then his hands were pulling at the flesh she was cutting away, tugging even as he retched but this time holding it together.

She was so bloody proud of him but she couldn't stop long enough to tell him that.

Her eyes kept darting up to the tree line, her fingers clumsy with the knife because she wasn't paying attention, focusing solely on cutting and pulling and throwing the flesh down onto their makeshift bag. Once it slipped, a bright line of blood welling up across her palm and she only hissed, waving Connor off when he stopped, his face worried and tried to grab at her hand. She kept on going even while Connor sat next to her, watching numbly as the red drops slid down the hilt towards the blade.

It wasn't like stripping a chicken. It wasn't even like feeding her snake with the corpses of rats and mice. That was child's play compared to this - cooked meat that slid easily off the bone or carcasses that were stiff and newly thawed, clinical in their cleanliness. This was fat that slipped against her fingers, against her knife; tendons and sinews that refused to give way, no matter how hard she tugged.

A sharp snap pulled her attention back to Connor, her heart pounding in her chest. Then he did it again, hitting the corpse hard with a rock he'd picked up until one of the ribs snapped, the bone sticking into the body cavity at an awkward angle. This time her stomach did revolt and she had to turn away, put her hand over her mouth, as he yanked it free, throwing it down onto the pile.

It didn't help. Her hand stank of blood and death.

She swallowed it down and turned back to the corpse, calling on every ounce of determination to keep going. Connor was watching her again, looking like the bottom had dropped out of the world and she had no time to give him a pep talk. His fingers were still slack against the bone he'd ripped out, his eyes a little vacant.

She had no idea what to say and so said nothing, going back to sawing and pulling. There was another crack and this time she didn't look up.

"Abby!" Connor's hiss this time was frantic, and he grabbed at her, his fingers digging painfully into her shoulder, yanking her up. She stumbled again, throwing her arm out for support. "C'mon," Connor said and this time it sounded like a snarl, his lips curling back from his teeth and his eyes wild.

That was when she saw it, the beast that Connor had spotted and was now loping down the slope slowly as it watched them warily. It was a smaller version of the not-hyena, not-boar, and she scrabbled to her feet, holding the knife out like it was going to do any bloody good if it decided it wanted fresh human meat instead of fairly fresh Mer. Connor was behind her - she could hear him moving about - and the creature's eyes tracked him instead.

It scared her more than she wanted to admit, that this hideous thing was watching Connor and not her, not the one with the admittedly very slim chance of defending herself. She shifted her stance, subtly moving so that she was between it and Connor, and then Connor's hand grabbed her elbow, tugging her away from the Mer's corpse, sideways and backwards, so that they were putting some distance between not only the corpse but it, that thing with the ugly face and sharp, sharp teeth.

It finally decided that they weren't a threat, especially as they were moving away from the corpse it had decided was dinner. It didn't seem willing to let them go without driving that message home, though, its own lips curling back from its teeth and its breath huffing out in something like a growl, eerily reminiscent of Connor.

Like Connor, who tugged at her harder, pulling her back towards the safety of the rocks, one hand around her elbow and the other clutching the crude bag he'd made of his jacket. She stumbled backwards, never talking her eyes off the thing that still might decide that they were the tastier option, everything around her sharply back in focus. She didn't pull away from Connor until they'd reached the rocks, and then she shoved the knife deep into the pocket of her hoodie, one hand over it to stop it falling out and the other grabbing at the rocks as she pulled her way back up the slope, following Connor at an angle that took her as far away and as quickly as possible from the predator that even now was circling the carcass and watching them.

It soon lost interest in them when it realised that they were giving up the kill to it. It sank its head down and buried it into the Mer's guts, the grunting and ripping sounds carrying up towards them.

They moved back a safe distance, Connor alternatively pushing and pulling at her like he was terrified to let go in case she slipped from his grasp. She didn't push him away, although the temptation to do just that was there. Instead she tolerated it because he was scared.

And so was she.

She didn't push him away because having his hands on her, knowing that he was within touching distance, was the only thing that kept her from just stopping once they were out of sight and sinking to the ground to weep, to just give in to the mingled exhaustion and fear that was dragging her down.

They didn't stop until they were not just out of sight but somewhere they could hide. Only then did she sink down to the ground, Connor falling down next to her. He opened his jacket, stained red with blood, and both of them stared down at the torn flesh in it.

It didn't look any more appetising away from the stench of the Mer. But they had to eat, even without the fire to cook it. They'd gone too long without, and every hour they went without food, the weaker they were becoming.

She reached out and took hold of one piece, trying not to look at it too closely. It didn't help. She had to stare at it for a moment and then, gathering up all of her courage, she brought it up to her mouth and closed her eyes, sinking her teeth into it.

It tasted foul, like slippery rubber, and she had to fight the urge to gag, chewing stubbornly until it had broken down enough for her to be able to swallow it. She choked down the first mouthful and it sat in her throat, thick and greasy. When it finally hit her stomach she thought she'd bring it up again, bending over and retching until the violent spasms of her stomach eased and tears welled up in her eyes.

"Abby?" Connor sounded terrified again. She couldn't look at him, instead reaching out and picking up another piece of flesh, this time holding it out to him.

He made no effort to take it from her, just sat there looking at it, his face uncomprehending, obviously pushed beyond endurance. She thrust it at her again, her chest tightening with a mixture of fear and impatience. "We have to eat. Connor, you've **got** to eat."

He stared at it, still uncomprehending, for another long moment and then his hand finally reached out for it.

"Eat it," Abby insisted. She watched him bring it up to his mouth, his face now slack, terrified that he'd baulk at the last minute, that she'd have to push him down and force it down his throat.

She would if she had to, if it was a choice between Connor eating it or not. She wasn't going to lose him to hunger if there was anything she could do about it, and she could. She would do whatever was needed.

He put it in his mouth, his face turning pale, sweat sliding down his face, and she watched him until he chewed and swallowed before she reached for another piece. The second mouthful went down a little easier, although it tasted just as disgusting. The third piece slipped in her hands as she tried to pick it up, sliding through her fingers and leaving a slick patina of blood and fat behind.

"Eat," she said again, a whisper that was aimed as much as herself as Connor, who was still trying to choke down another mouthful. There were tears streaming down his face although she had no idea why - whether it was the taste of the meat, or a result of his gag reflex or anything else. "Connor?" she said and he finally looked at her, wiping his hand over his eyes and leaving a smear of blood behind. He gave her a small smile, all broken and hurt around the edges, and it cut as cleanly into her as if he'd used his knife. She wanted to cry, watching him cry, watching him finally pick up a piece of his own, his sharp white teeth tearing into it until blood ran down his chin. And when that was gone, he took one of the bones he'd managed to break off and picked up another rock, smashing it open while she watched him dully, the meat she'd swallowed sitting heavily on her stomach. He offered it to her first, either chivalry or maybe - more likely - that he couldn't take that step unless it was by following her example. She didn't comment but dug her fingers dug into the marrow, the move almost automatic, and scooped it out.

She sucked it off her fingers, the texture grainy and coarse against her tongue. Her stomach was cramping, the food almost too rich for her after so long without, stretching her shrunken stomach. She willed it into submission, twisting her body into a shape that lent her the most comfort, eating more slowly and watching him, waiting for him to follow where she led.

This time Connor was sick again and she couldn't even pat his back comfortingly as his stomach got rid of the hard won sustenance. She didn't have the energy, beyond lethargy now, covered in blood and eating the flesh raw.

When his retching had eased, she handed him the rest of the marrow, merciless in her drive to keep him alive.

He took it, the tear tracks from the violence of his retching - from everything else - clear against the dirt on his face.

This time he managed to keep it down. It was all she could ask for.

* * *

Jenny was smart enough to stay the hell out of his way when they got back to the ARC. Stephen wasn't anywhere near that smart, not on this occasion, despite knowing Nick for longer and usually being more attuned to his moods.

That meant that it was Stephen who bore the brunt of Nick's ill-humour. He took it with better grace than Nick would have done if the circumstances had been reversed. He didn't comment on Nick's foul mood but watched, silently, as Nick stormed into his office and sank into the chair behind the desk. One of the admin staff - and Nick had yet to learn her name, not when there were so many of them in this timeline, all scurrying about and doing things that seemed important to them if not to Nick - stuck her head around the doorframe, took one look at him and, sensibly, fled.

Stephen turned his head to watch her go, his face inanimate, giving absolutely nothing away about what he was thinking, how he was feeling. There were thin lines around his mouth, though, and rings around his eyes, making him look a hell of a lot older than his thirty odd years, drawn and exhausted before his time.

He looked back at Nick, still saying nothing, and the silence grew oppressive.

"You got nothing to say?"

Stephen gave him a one shouldered shrug, watching him closely. There was nothing of Stephen's normal ease in his stance, the unconscious grace that said that Stephen was perfectly comfortable in his body. Instead there was a tension evident and Nick had no idea whether or not that was because of him or the situation. Or even anything else. Stephen was as opaque to him now as Jenny was, the unfamiliarity jarring when there'd been a time when he knew exactly what had been going through his colleague's - his **friend's** - head.

It... hurt. It... there was nothing familiar now, nothing. Stephen was this distant stranger, Claudia was gone. And now Abby and Connor...

It was disconcerting to realise that the only person who was still the same, the only one who had neither changed or vanished, was Lester. More than disconcerting - depressing. And lonely.

"We saved a lot of lives today," Stephen said eventually.

"But not Connor or Abby's."

Stephen sighed and again Nick's temper flared, the urge to lash out, say something - **do** something - rising. "What do you want me to say?" Stephen asked. "That we'll get them back? That the next anomaly that opens will be the one to where they are?"

"Do you actually believe that?" The anger had drained out of his tone, ebbing as soon as it had risen and exhaustion taking its place. He didn't bother to hide any of that because what was the point? All that was left was a kind of dull emptiness, so familiar from those weeks and months after Helen's disappearance. The first one, when he'd actually cared about her and believed that she cared about him. The one where he'd actually wanted to get her back.

Stephen met his gaze frankly, nothing hidden there either, for once. "I have to," he said simply. "What's the alternative?"

"Give up?" It wasn't a suggestion and thankfully Stephen didn't take it as such.

"The next anomaly that opens up will lead to them." He held Nick's gaze unwaveringly. "And if not that one, then the one after that or the one after that and we'll be here, ready. Waiting for it."

"Will it be in time?" Nick didn't let his gaze drop either, wanting - **needing** - complete honesty from Stephen on that point.

"Like you said. They're smart, resourceful. And they have each other."

"And is that going to be enough?"

Now Stephen sighed, and looked away, looking immeasurably weary. "It's going to have to be," he said, and Nick felt like a complete heel, pushing the point like that. None of this was Stephen's fault. In the end, Nick only had one person to blame, the same person who was always to blame - himself.

After a second, Stephen turned back, all brisk business. "Have you made any more progress on reviewing the data from the canal?"

Nick could only slump back into his chair, defeated on that as he had been on everything else. "I think there might be a pattern emerging," he said, "but... I don't know. I can barely think." He scrubbed his hands over his face, not missing the way that the bristles on his cheeks and chin scratched at his palms. He was surprised that Jenny hadn't said something about that, but perhaps she was of the 'discretion is the better part of valour' school of thought. "What about you? Anything from the stuff Jenny got from our local businessmen?" He wondered, briefly, what it said about them that he was reviewing the data from the canal - where Stephen had been convinced the anomaly was - while Stephen reviewed the data that wasn't.

Stephen pushed himself away from the doorway and finally took a few steps into the room. "Same as you - a lot of anecdotal data to try and fit together into some kind of pattern and, frankly, it's doing my head in."

The rueful smiles they shared this time were easier, more genuine. More like it used to be, as far as Nick recalled.

"Need some help?" Nick offered. "A fresh pair of eyes might work."

Stephen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe if we combined the data?" he suggested. "The anomaly in the canal seems to have opened first this time." At Nick's look, he added, his mouth quirking a little, "The one the shark came through. And it was the one that the anomaly detector picked up first."

Nick supposed that when it came to it, he couldn't argue that point, not with the data he'd been picking over for the last few days. There was no doubt that there had been anomalies opening in the canal - not to Nick's mind at least - and there was no doubt that the walrus like creatures had come through the warehouse, at least. They may even have come through both, assuming that both opened to the same future timeline, but the shark couldn't have come through the one that Abby and Connor had disappeared through. There was no way that the flooding in the warehouse had been anything but tidal and therefore no way for a purely aquatic creature to have made it through that particular anomaly.

Stephen was still eyeing him, his face settling back into immobility, giving nothing away. "Sure," Nick said, finally. "Let's put them together, and see what we've got."

* * *

They found a cave, finally, set back from the shore, another one of those that seemed to have been eaten into the rock by long gone tides. She hoped they were long gone, anyway. She had no desire to wake up one morning and find herself drowned. But it was set back from the intertidal zone, as far as they could determine it, and was deep enough to shelter them from the rain and the worst of the storms. She hoped.

It was, however, a good half hour's walk from where the river fed into the sea, and the mangroves that grew around the margins there. Which meant they were a good half an hour from fresh water.

That worried her but not as much as being closer to it did. The not-hyena, not-boar thing - and she was going to have to come up with a better name for it than that - probably came from the grasslands that surrounded the forest rather than the forest proper - she didn't see how something that massive could hunt well in between the ferns and the tangled roots of the trees that thrust down into the river canals, trapping the silt they grew in. It was too large, surely.

But it obviously had no qualms about coming down to the beach, and the further they were from the only reliable source of water, the further they'd be from its hunting grounds - she hoped.

The foreshore here was largely flat, though. There were boulders, like the ones they'd cowered behind, but it meant that even though they had to trek to find water, they didn't have to clamber up and down, leaving them exhausted and vulnerable.

She hoped about that too.

But this, at the moment, was home and Connor had agreed to that without argument; without comment even. It worried her a little, that he was so quiet and subdued, but the larger part of her brain was worried about the more immediate dangers. She simply didn't have the reserves to cope with anything else.

The meat had settled in her stomach and, provided she didn't think about it, she wasn't feeling nauseous any longer, just tired and beaten. But she couldn't stop - neither of them could. They were still teetering on the very edge of survival and there was so much more that could kill them. And not all of those things came with teeth.

They were gathering driftwood now - and that showed that there were trees, somewhere. Real ones, as Connor would call them, rather than simply ferns. Maybe they were from the mangroves, thrown into the sea by the violent storms that wracked the area but frankly Abby didn't care where they'd come from. She only cared whether or not they'd burn.

They hadn't figured out how to create fire yet, but they'd have to at some point. She didn't want to subsist on raw meat and given the encounter they'd had on the foreshore earlier, she wanted to be sure that they had some way of defending themselves. In the absence of an assault rifle, she reckoned that fire was the next best thing. She wasn't stupid. If Connor was right about the prevalence of forest fires in the Carboniferous, and right about the climate of this world and the composition of the air being similar, well... As far as Abby was concerned, anything in this world that wasn't terrified of fire, when the world might set itself ablaze around them with a monotonous frequency, was simply too stupid to live.

Survival of the fittest and all that.

They might not be the fittest or the fastest or even the most dangerous of species, not anymore, but the creatures of this world might find out to their cost that when it came down to it, humans were resourceful and humans were **mean**.

Connor had already found some flint, the hard rock buried in the far softer chalk, easy to dig out when you had something like a sharp, curved bone to help you. It was kind of symbolic, she supposed, that you uncovered something from rock soft enough be eaten away by water, and it was something hard and sharp.

Humans had been making hand axes for as long as there had been humans; longer, if you counted some of their hominid ancestors. She had faith that Connor would figure it out. He was the sort of person who really could build a better mousetrap if he put his mind to it.

She had faith in him, more than he'd ever realise.

She dumped the armful of driftwood she had just inside the entrance to their cave, and raised her hand, shielding her eyes from the sun as she scanned the foreshore for him. There was a dark head, bowed down near the water's edge and, when she rose onto her tiptoes, the rest of Connor came into view, crouched down.

Frowning slightly, she made her way down the beach, keeping her eyes peeled for signs of anything really. Anything with teeth or claws, or that looked like it might be vulnerable to their teeth and claws, weak though they were.

Connor looked up when she approached, and she should be thankful that he was that aware of his surroundings given how he usually got when something caught his attention. He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling. He was still a little green around the edges because their diet didn't seem to be agreeing with him, and his nose was peeling worse than ever, but there was a brightness to his eyes that had been missing for the last few days, since the hunger had started to bite.

"Abby, look at this."

He tugged at something that slowly revealed itself to be a turtle's shell - another species that predated the dinosaurs and had apparently had made it this far into the future as well. There were weird spikes at the fore-end of the carapace, growths that presumably jutted out and had protected this species' head, and the carapace itself was blockier in shape, with fewer plates than she was used to, but they were thicker, more armoured. It didn't seem as streamlined as the turtles she was used to either, but then neither had the future shark. Maybe speed had been sacrificed for resilience and protection against attack.

Connor tugged harder and finally managed to flip it over. The plastron had gone entirely, leaving just the back of the shell, and there were bits of meat still clinging to the inside of the shell, black and stringy.

Her stomach turned over again. Surely Connor couldn't expect them to try and eat this. Could he?

It seemed that Connor had other ideas.

"What do you think?"

She looked at him blankly, not really surprised when he huffed in exasperation. It was more animation than he'd shown for a while, so she let it slide past without comment.

"It's waterproof, right?" She continued to look at him blankly, and his face grew a little uncertain. "I was thinking, you know... in case it rains again?"

The penny dropped. "Connor," she said slowly. "You're a genius."

This time his whole face lit up before he ducked his head, a little embarrassed at the praise. That was the thing about Connor - sometimes he could be entirely clueless about personal interaction, or about how he came across. At other times, sweet didn't even begin to describe him.

"I was just..." He rubbed his hand along the edge of the shell, a small, pleased smile still playing around the corners of his mouth. "I wasn't sure how we get it clean. I mean, we could use the knife... but, you know."

Yeah, she did. The risk of snapping it was too great.

"It's easy," she said. This time it was his turn to look at her blankly, and she picked up a handful of sand, let it trickle through her fingers. It took him a second to get her drift but then she could see it click. His face lit up again. She could get used to that.

It would be worth the inevitable sore fingers that scrubbing the inside of the shell with makeshift sandpaper if it meant that they had a way to store fresh water. Connor would figure out the hand axe thing, and they'd figure out how to make fire - she had faith in that. She had to.

A little time and a lot of ingenuity, and they'd have water and weapons, which was a hell of an improvement on the situation previously.

Things were looking up.

* * *

"We've found it!"

Lester looked spectacularly unimpressed at the announcement.

"Found what, exactly?"

Nick waved the sheaf of papers he had clutched in his hand at the man, not that it made much difference.

"The anomalies. We've found a pattern to the opening of the anomalies."

Now that finally got Lester's attention; the man actually sat up straight and the bored look evaporated from his face as though it had never been there.

"What, all of them?"

"The one that Abby and Connor disappeared through. And the one that preceded it, in the canal."

"Ah." There was a subtle shift in Lester's body, one that spoke of his lessening interest. No, that wasn't fair of Nick - it wasn't that Lester was no longer interested. It was more, he thought, that Lester's interest had been shifted from the 'bigger picture', to steal one of the man's own phrases, to a smaller, more personal family snap.

And Lester was not a man particularly comfortable with the personal.

"We've determined that there was one in the canal, then?" He eyed Nick a little beadily and Nick tensed. "I thought we'd decided that it was in the warehouse."

"It's in both," Stephen interrupted, moving around to place his laptop on Lester's desk, opening the lid and waiting for the machine to come out of hibernate mode. Lester switched from eyeing Nick to eyeing the laptop beadily instead.

"Please tell me that you aren't about to fire up a PowerPoint presentation," he said. "I can't abide the things."

The corner of Stephen's mouth twitched; it seemed as though not even Lester's snide little remarks could shatter his good mood now, not when they'd finally made a breakthrough that could give them hope.

"No," he said, calmly. "It's a graph."

"Oh, joy," murmured Lester, his trademark sarcasm now firmly back into play.

Stephen ignored the comment, and turned the screen around so that Lester could see it. Nick had already seen it more than once, but the hope was such a tentative thing that he moved around behind Lester's chair anyway, just to see it again.

Lester gave him a look but didn't comment.

"What is it I'm actually looking for?"

"The blue line is when we think the canal anomaly opened. Where it's solid, we've got good evidence that supports it. If it's a dash, it means we've had to extrapolate from data that perhaps isn't quite as robust."

"Oh, God save me from scientists. Do try to keep it simple, gentlemen. And by simple, I mean 'cut to the chase'. What's the red line."

"When we think that there was an anomaly opening in the warehouse, or in one of the warehouses nearby," Nick interjected.

"It moves?" Trust Lester to leap on that point.

"Not far, no. Most of the time, it opens up exactly where we saw it, or at least in the same building. The flooding tells us that much. Where there are squares on the line, that means that there's evidence of flooding in nearby warehouses as well. It could simply be seepage in from the main site, or it could be the anomaly shifting slightly. If it does, it stays within a few hundred feet."

"Hmmm." Lester tapped his finger against the desktop thoughtfully. "And that little blip there?" Now he tapped the screen, scowling at Stephen when he pulled the laptop back an inch or so, a little protective of it.

Nick craned his neck so that he could still see the point where Lester had indicated. "That's the reading we got from the anomaly detector this time around, when Leek's team had trouble actually pinpointing it. You see how the lines intersect?"

"If you mean the way that they cross over each other, yes. I'm not completely stupid."

Nick exchanged a look with Stephen and the smile they shared didn't go unnoticed.

"The point, gentlemen?"

"The anomalies seem to come in cycles," Stephen explained. "The one in the warehouse seems the more significant event - it opens more frequently, and seems to be open for longer. But they seem to alternate, and they're very close together, at least at first." He looked at Nick again before continuing. "We think that may have been why the anomaly detector couldn't home in on it fast enough."

"It was caught between trying to pinpoint two synchronous, geographically close anomalies, you mean?"

No. Lester was a long way from being stupid.

"Yeah," Nick said. "That's what we think."

"Okay. Now you've tried blinding me with science - and, I might add, failed - why don't you get to the important part?" Nick and Stephen exchanged looks again, a little confused, and Lester snorted impatiently. "When is it next going to open? I'm assuming you didn't go to the effort of creating pretty pictures just for the hell of it."

"The cycles seem to come and go over two weeks or so, at least as far as we can determine. They're open for two or three days - sporadically, at least - and then there's a lull before the next cycle of openings that lasts eleven or twelve days."

"And it's been five days since it last closed?"

Lester knew that - or he should, given the way that almost everyone around him had been counting down the hours - but it was possible he was simply trying to keep them focused.

That might be giving the man a little too much credit, though.

"Yes." It was Stephen who answered this time too, Nick too busy watching Lester, wondering which way he was going to jump.

"So that means you have six or seven days to figure out as much as you can from the little evidence we've got about what the retrieval teams are likely to run into on the other side of the anomaly." He looked between them before raising an eyebrow, beginning to look a little exasperated again. "It pays to plan. I'm surprised the pair of you haven't figured that out by now.

"Well, once you **have** figured it out, talk to Jenny." He sat back up in his chair, spinning it around to face his desk and gesturing peremptorily at Stephen to remove his laptop. "Make a list of what you need, liaise with the military unit on the ground if you have to, and get Leek to organise any requisitions." He looked up, seeming a little surprised to find them still standing there. "I'll sign them, of course. Assuming you don't go a little mad and try to order a nuclear submarine. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing on the other side that would make **that** an appropriate response."

He pulled some paperwork towards him, not even looking up when he added, "Don't let me keep you, hmm?" 


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 16**

For once it was Abby who slept longer that morning, the exhaustion catching up with her. Connor had taken the last watch of the night, and the presence of the fire had gone some way to soothing her fears, at least enough to finally fall into an uneasy slumber, one she didn't stir from until the sun was already high in the sky.

When she finally stumbled out of their cave, the fire had gone out but the ashes were still smouldering gently, giving off heat. She skirted around it on her way to where Connor was sitting on a rock - the day was already growing warm and even the heat from the ashes was too much on top of that. It would cool eventually though, and then they'd be able to eat their one meal today. Her stomach rumbled at the thought but quietly. Perhaps, like her, it was just growing used to being empty.

It had been more than two weeks, and there had been no sign of the anomaly reopening, nor had there been any sign of anyone following them through the anomaly. Each and every night they watched, staring along the coast for any sign of an anomaly glittering in the darkness. It might have taken them two days to get this far but Abby wasn't stupid. They'd been travelling slowly, their speed curtailed by the terrain and the weather, as well as their fear and exhaustion. As the crow flew, it was far closer than that, and the coast curved around. They hadn't realised that when they'd set out, because the mouth of the river was offset from the beach and hidden behind the end of the escarpment, but they were on one side of a wide, shallow bay and the anomaly had opened on the other side. That was their best guess anyway. But it meant that if the anomaly opened, it would open on the other side of the bay and they would see it. At least when it was dark, when there was no other light source to distract from it

If it opened at night they'd see it. She was sure of it, just like she was sure that the first thing anyone following them through would do was fire a flare. She had to be sure of it because that hope - that surety - was almost everything she had.

Two weeks and nothing. If it hadn't been for Connor, she'd have given up hope by now, gone stark staring mad. Connor kept her grounded and Connor kept her sane. And she did the same for him, she hoped.

Connor was turning out to be a bit of a revelation. She'd always known that he was smart - it was a bit difficult to miss - but there really was an odd streak of practicality in him that was made up of equal parts imagination and a memory for esoteric facts combined with the ability to twist them to fit the circumstances.

Like figuring out how to cook when they had no pans or utensils. It was Connor who had come up with the bright idea of digging a pit in the sand and burying their food, wrapped in large fern leaves, in it before building a fire over the top. He'd picked the idea up from some TV show, he'd said. Some documentary where Islanders from a tropical paradise had cooked their community feasts in just such a fashion.

She'd been dubious. She shouldn't have been - he'd been right, like he'd been about so many things so far. It had taken some experimentation, and the Mer flesh didn't taste much better cooked than it had raw, but they'd come up with a system that worked fairly well. Providing that they had anything to cook. The Mer meat hadn't lasted long and neither of them were up to hunting anything that size on their own.

They were down to some weirdly shaped shellfish instead, which were easier - but not exactly easy - to collect from all along the shoreline. They weren't much to write home about - they tasted like salty rubber, even when cooked with the seaweed that they'd also collected - but she couldn't complain about it. The pair of them were lucky to have anything to cook at all.

"Hey."

"Hey." Connor looked up at her and smiled, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun. His fingers were red again, covered in small streaks where the myriad of small cuts that adorned his hands had bled. It made her wince just to look at them.

"How's it going?" she asked, settling herself down on a rock near him and tucking her hands under her knees just so that she wouldn't reach out and touch him. The rock was already warm from the sun and she closed her eyes and tilted her face up towards it. It was bright, even through her eyelids, but it was pleasant on her face. Give it a couple of hours and it would be a different story. The sun at midday was brutal - Connor could attest to that. His nose and neck were a dull red, the skin peeling badly in spite of the fact that they'd tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible. It was difficult, though, when all of their time was spent in the never ending search for food or firewood or anything else that might keep them alive.

Connor held up the flint nodule he'd been working on, tilting it so that she could see it clearly. It didn't look like much but she made an approving noise anyway, not wanting to discourage him. She supposed it did look a little different than it had before Connor had started to shape it but then she wasn't entirely sure what a hand axe was supposed to look like. Before the anomalies, she'd always been more interested in recent creatures, the ones inhabiting the world all around her. She'd expanded her knowledge of prehistoric creatures immeasurably since starting work on the project - and living with Connor - but hominid development was still something she didn't know a great deal about.

People had never really interested her. Not as much as lizards did.

"It's..." she said, searching for just the right adjectives.

"It's a rock," Connor said, smiling again. He looked tired; his cheeks were sunken and his hair was greasy, starting to slide into his face before he pushed it back with one grimy hand. He was cultivating quite a beard as well. It was weird to see it on his face - it made him look older, not at all like the Connor she knew. She could hardly comment on his appearance, though - she doubted she looked much better. "Well, actually it's a hand axe but..." He eyed it critically, turning it this way and that in the sunlight. "I think it's getting there."

She smiled back at him, making a noncommittal noise and bringing her hands up to cup her knees instead of sitting on them. He ducked his head, looking kind of pleased even though she hadn't really said anything. But then she wasn't really sure what she could say to Connor when they had these quiet moments. The rest of the time was so rushed, so stressed, that they didn't have to talk, but it was times like this... well, there was that whole elephant in the room thing and Connor was pretty much avoiding the whole topic.

She still wasn't sure how she felt about that. She just hadn't had the time to dwell on it so in a way, the fact that he was avoiding it meant that she didn't have to.

"It's great," she said, giving him another smile. "You're really getting the hang of this."

The smile he gave her this time was a little rueful. "I couldn't get much worse," he said, rubbing absently at one of the cuts on the back of his hand. "Worse than woodwork. I seem to get more splinters."

She hesitated and then reached out to catch hold of his hand, turning it over so that she could examine the palm and not missing the way that his breath caught in his throat at her touch. She traced one of the longer scratches with her finger, gently so that it didn't hurt him, and his fingers trembled a little in her grip.

"I think you're doing great, Connor."

Her voice came out low for some reason, and he ducked his head again. This time the red that stained his cheeks above the dark growth of his stubble wasn't from the sun.

"I... um... I made you something. I mean, I made something I thought you could use."

"Oh?" Now she was curious. She couldn't imagine what he could have made for her, not here where there was nothing. He reached down, scrubbing around in the sand at his feet until he found what he was looking for.

"Oh," she said again. "It's a rock." Then she bit her lip, glancing at him to make sure that she hadn't offended him. Although offending Connor usually took a lot more concerted effort.

He was smiling again, doing that thing where he smiled at her from under his lashes, trying - and failing - to hide his grin.

"It's a knife," he explained. "Sort of." He held it out to her, his smile this time a little hopeful around the edges. She took it, turning it over in her fingers and admiring the colour of it - a deep blue black. "Careful," he said. "It's -"

Her fingers slipped and the blade sliced into the heel of her thumb. She hissed and brought her hand up to her mouth.

"- sharp," he finished, wincing a little sheepishly. "Here. Let me..."

He took the blade from her, placing it carefully on the ground, and then reached up for her hand, hesitating for a brief moment before he pulled it gently away from her mouth. Her heart tripped a beat before speeding up as he unfurled her fingers, tracing his finger carefully over her palm, touching her just like she'd touched him, moments earlier.

Her hand was barely bleeding - the blade had cut in at an angle, so that there was a long, thin flap of white skin but little in the way of blood. It would sting later, though, when she was down on the shore, dipping her hand into the cold seawater as she tried to twist and rip shellfish loose from where they were clinging to the rocks.

Connor hesitated for another moment, eyes flicking up to sneak a look at her face - like she was able to take her eyes from him with her heart still doing the salsa in her chest. Then he lifted her hand higher, dipping his head to place a gentle kiss in the middle of her palm, his stubble scratching at her skin.

It rendered her speechless and his face, when he looked back up, was redder than ever. He gave her another one of those smiles, all tentative around the edges, hope and fear all mixed up together, and said, a little sheepishly, "My mum always used to kiss it better."

So had hers and it felt like a stomach punch, how quickly and how hard the fact that she missed her mum - her **mum** of all people - washed over her, leaving tears stinging in her eyes and a lump in her throat as big as the rock Connor had been working on.

Connor dropped her hand, his cheeks still pink, and cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed. He rubbed his hands against his legs, a nervous move he had sometimes when things were just a little much, and she couldn't do anything but sit there and watch him twist in the wind, stunned silent by the sense of loss. He deserved better, but then didn't she?

"Breakfast?" he asked her brightly, avoiding her eyes. She still couldn't speak - too worried that she'd burst into tears and that Connor might think that it was something he'd done. He had the habit of doing that.

She smiled instead, a little watery, and that must have caught his attention because now he looked at her, his face settling into a look of concern. She swallowed, taking a firm grip on everything and shoving those things she didn't need right now down to the back, burying them as deep as she could. It hurt but it was better than having to deal with Connor's well meaning sympathy.

That would break her completely.

"That sounds good," she got out, rather proud of how little her voice wavered. Maybe a little, at the end, but it either fooled Connor or he decided, for once, that stumbling in with his size tens wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. Whatever the reason, he gave her a searching look for a moment, and then another of those brief, quirky smiles, moving away from her to pick up the large, flat shell they'd found - one half of another bivalve - to start pushing the ashes away from the fire. As always, in spite of how well he positioned himself, some soot blew back at him, making his face even dirtier than it had been, and he wiped his sleeve over his face, smearing it and ending up looking like a refugee from Mary Poppins.

The shellfish were hot, burning the end of her fingers as she pulled the edges further apart, scooping out the flesh within impatiently. But she was hungry enough to ignore the brief pain, sucking at her fingers instead when she pushed the food into her mouth to ease the sting of it. Connor was almost as impatient, although he did slow down half way through their meal, his eyes wandering to where he'd been working on his hand axe and his expression thoughtful. She almost offered a penny for his thoughts but... Well, she wasn't entirely sure she was ready to pay the price if it involved everything that they weren't talking about.

Not yet. Not when there was something sitting in her belly that had no right to be there and she missed her mum like crazy.

"So..." She cast her mind frantically about for a safe topic of conversation instead, because anything - almost anything - was better than the silence. "What do you want to do today?"

He snorted, turning his attention back to his meal. She'd been good - she hadn't stolen his share while he'd been distracted, and she was now down to stuffing the steamed or roasted or firepitted - however you described it - seaweed into her mouth, chewing stubbornly. Very stubbornly.

He shrugged, eyes moving back up to her face, sliding to her ear before it dropped away again, and he went back to staring thoughtfully at where his hand axe lay discarded on the sand.

"Do you want to try fishing?" he asked. "I mean, like real fish."

Real fish would be awesome, assuming that there was such a thing around here. She could feel her mouth start to water at the thought of it, and she'd never considered herself to be much of a fish fan, unless it came in batter and with a side order of chips and mushy peas.

"Yeah," she said wistfully. "That would be great."

He grinned again, fingers now pulling apart the strands of seaweed as though that would make them more edible. "Can I have your earring then?"

She blinked, her hand flying up to finger the earring studding the curve of her ear. She'd forgotten it was there, so used to wearing it. It was a miracle it hadn't been ripped out. "Yeah. Course you can." She fumbled it undone and handed it over, rewarded with another smile before he pulled it apart, examining it. "What do you want it for?"

"Thought it might make a fish hook. Well, sort of." He pulled it further apart, straining to bend the metal and it did end up looking a little more like a hook than a ring. "If I put the wire through this bit..." She craned forward and looked at where he was pointing, the part where the thin wire that went through her ear was attached to the ornamental part. "It should fit. I suppose we'll just have to try it and see, yeah? Pity we don't have any more wire, really." His eyes unfocused a little, a sure sign that he was thinking about something. "I mean, stronger stuff. For hooks." He shrugged. "I suppose if we manage to find... I don't know... some thorns or something."

He sounded doubtful, and then it clicked. They did. She could kick herself for not thinking of it sooner.

She might have baulked a bit at doing this before - even when they shared a flat, there were just some things you didn't do around a bloke - but it seemed a bit weird to be precious about it here, when they were two or three meals from starvation and when this was just another resource they could exploit.

Although it was also a bit weird to be thinking about it in those terms. The only option was to not let herself think about it too much. So she just reached up underneath her top, at the back, and unfastened her bra.

Connor watched her open-mouthed as she hooked her fingers up her sleeves, tugging at each strap in turn down her arms and slipping her hands out, and then she could reach up underneath the front of her top and just tug.

She presented it to him with a flourish, because it was better that way; better to make a production out of it than to be embarrassed. He was red enough for both of them, still open-mouthed and looking a little shell-shocked, and that somehow made it easier, funnier.

"Wow," he said, taking it and handling it like it was going to blow up in his face any second. He was being very good at not touching the lace, she noticed. "I didn't know girls could do that."

She suspected he didn't know a lot about what girls could do.

"We are creatures of many talents," she intoned seriously, fighting off a case of the giggles. "Maybe you could use the underwires. Not sure whether you can shape them or not -" he blushed even harder at that, "- but it's worth a try." And then, feeling adventurous, she added, "The rest might be useful as well."

He completely lost it at that, his hand coming up to cover his mouth but not before she heard something that sounded suspiciously like the first line of _I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts_. She kicked out at him, grinning herself, wider when he rolled away from her foot, still laughing.

"Connor Temple!" she said, aiming for shock and not fooling him for a second. "That's a really inappropriate suggestion." She waited a beat, long enough for him to look at her again, his eyes dancing with glee, and then added, "I haven't seen any coconuts. Don't know about you."

That sat him off again, and this time she just watched him, grinning, while he fought to get himself back under control. It hadn't even been that funny, but it was the tension, she supposed. Whatever the reason, it was lovely to see after the sombreness of the last few days, from both of them, and for a split second she just wanted to grab hold of him and kiss him, swallowing that laughter down.

She had no idea where the impulse had come from and she could feel the heat rushing to her face as the thought crossed her mind. It pushed her into awkwardness and she swallowed it all down, sobering up rapidly.

"So," she said, nudging him with her toe and watching as the laughter slowly faded from his face. "Any ideas about where's the best place to fish?"

He wiped at his eyes, smearing the soot further. "I thought off the coast here, but I haven't really seen anything that counts as a shoal. Not that I'm exactly an experienced fisherm - person. What about you?"

She gave it some thought, turning ideas over and over in her mind, trying to concentrate on the ones that had to do with fishing. "I think our best bet might be to head back towards the mangroves. Lots of nutrients being washed down to the sea. From what I know about the way they develop in our time - and from what we've seen - I think it will have a high level of both biodiversity and biomass."

"So, more likely to be fish there, both more species and more of them," he interpreted. "You could have just said that."

"Right. Like you're any better with your geekspeak."

He let that slide, pushing himself to his feet and offering her a hand to pull her up again. She didn't miss the 'oof' he let out when she let him bear her full weight, and she kicked him in the ankle as she passed him, just in case.

"We can have another scout around, look for other things we can eat," she said, reaching over to pick up her knife - the one that Connor had made her - and slipping it into her pocket. It felt cool against her hand, smooth on the edge that he hadn't sharpened, and she wrapped her fingers around it, feeling it fit snugly into her palm. "You ready?"

* * *

  
They were quicker in getting to the mangroves this time, maybe because they were getting used to the route, or maybe because they were simply getting used to moving over the terrain. They moved together smoothly, walking side by side, Connor fiddling with the wire he was carrying, smoothing out the kinks and not really paying much attention to what was going on around him.

Abby wondered if kicking him again might actually force him to stay alert. But that was Connor, for you. He might sweat the small stuff on occasion, when he worried about minutiae, but the big stuff - the scary stuff that tended to keep her awake at night, turning over all of their options in her mind and coming up terrifyingly short - he just tended to wander through and remain oblivious of. He concentrated on the technical, on the tasks he'd broken down into steps, moving through them one by one. But as for the big picture...

It was Abby who remained alert, Abby who kept a watch out for any sign of danger. They had to climb on the approach towards the mangroves, where the escarpment curved down towards the river, and this was always where she was the most twitchy. The visibility here was poor. The grasslands that stretched out, covering the ground from the forest to the foot of the escarpment, were growing in day by day, fuelled by the rains that fell each night. The grass was growing longer, still patchy and short in some places, but with clumps that now would reach Abby's waist.

When Connor looked out over that land, he probably didn't see much. He was still, she thought, attuned to the land they'd left, not the one they were trapped in now. If you wandered through the parks in the city they lived in, you might have to worry about the grass hiding dog muck or mud or, if the worst came to the worst, a mugger. Here it could be hiding something much worse.

They hadn't seen the hyboars since that first evening they'd arrived at the river, when they'd first tasted Mer meat. That didn't, as far as Abby was concerned, mean that the hyboars had moved on and vacated the vicinity. It just meant that up to now they'd been lucky.

So she kept her eyes peeled as they slid down the slope to the plains, watching for any movement in the long grass that could be put down to more than the wind.

Nothing stirred but she didn't relax until the shadows of the forest engulfed them. It was weird how soon she got used to this - the gloom, full of insects that grew to obscene sizes and small potholes burrowed into the ground and inhabited by small lizards or spiders or even, she thought, catching sight once of something brown and sleek scurrying off into the undergrowth, small mammals. But then the alternative was something with teeth and tusks that had taken down something their size without any effort, so she'd take the forest any day.

They took a similar path to the one they'd taken many times before, down to the river, and they passed trees and shrubs and ferns that were growing familiar. Here was the hollow with the broken tree stump, the remnants of the tree that had once grown there tumbled down to lie on the ground. It was covered with moss but even that carpet of green couldn't cover the black, scorched bark that had resulted from either a lightning strike or a localised forest fire. They stopped there for a moment, and Abby slid her knife out of her pocket, using it to slice off a piece of fungus that already showed nicks around its edges. The knife worked like a dream and the smile she gave Connor this time was both proud and grateful.

"That was the one I was trying, yeah?" She had no idea why Connor felt the need to whisper but maybe it was just the stillness of the forest. It wasn't just the size of the ferns that made you feel small. It was everything else as well, from the insects to the size of the fungal growths on this once mighty tree.

Some days she felt like Alice but this wasn't a wonderland.

"Yeah," she said, her voice as low as his. She held the piece - bigger than the one he'd tried previously - out to him.

This had been Connor's idea as well, to try these strange potential foodstuffs out a tiny bit at a time, hoping that if there was any reaction, it wouldn't be fatal at small doses and that they'd therefore have some warning. Actually, it had been Connor's idea that **he** try it out, a small piece at a time. They'd had a blazing row about it when Abby had pointed out - quite rightly in her opinion - that this was a risk that **both** of them took. Maybe not on the same plants, but one of them was not going to be guinea pig while the other sat back.

And by that she meant that **she** wasn't going to sit back while Connor tried to poison himself.

She'd won that argument by simply telling him that if he took something that killed him, she was eating it straight afterwards.

He'd had no comeback to that but the look in his eyes made her regret ever suggesting that she'd do such a thing, even though it had won her the fight.

They tried not to be too stupid about it - they avoided anything that looked like it was flashing natural warning signs, so they didn't touch anything that was bright red or spotted or that didn't quite look or smell right. They stuck to the things that looked like other things had tried to eat it, if not the same plant then at least evidence of that on other, nearby plants of the same type. And so far neither of them had died.

She had to believe that it was always going to be that way. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that she couldn't live without Connor now. It was simply a cold, hard fact.

Connor took the proffered slice without question, placing it on his tongue and chewing it slowly while she watched him, trying not to let her anxiety show. He didn't say much but his face twisted at the taste, as it had last time. It was unusual for Connor not to say something; he wasn't normally the stoic type, but maybe she'd misjudged him on that. She was having to readjust her views on him each and every day, in spite of the fact that they'd pretty much been living in each other's pockets since the day he'd moved into her flat, what, eight months ago?

Some things - the best things - hadn't changed. They'd quickly slipped into the habit of having those sorts of conversations that had always annoyed her with her couple friends - the ones where they always seemed to talk in shorthand, not so much completing each other's sentences as almost reading each other's minds, so that talking consisted of a series of brief, seemingly unrelated comments that were totally cryptic to anyone else. It had annoyed the hell out of Caroline, which was one of the reasons Abby had been in no hurry to stop.

They still did that - there was just no one to comment on it now. It was just... the other, un-talked about stuff that had changed.

"Okay?" she asked him. He shrugged.

"Still tastes like polystyrene," he said and she smiled sympathetically. The one she'd been trying had a taste a bit like antiseptic. She couldn't say she was sorry that there didn't seem to be any around today. Maybe they'd find some as they moved further towards the river.

The forest wasn't deep here, which was just as well. She knew how easy it was to get lost when the trees were thick and disorientating and here there'd be no one riding to the rescue. They probably wouldn't ever venture further in than the river bank - it was too dangerous. As it was, it was only a few minutes before she heard the gentle plink, plink of water droplets, falling from the overhanging leaves into the river. She couldn't hear the river itself, not yet. The water was too sluggish here to make much of a sound, which was why it might be perfect for Connor to test out his new toy. She assumed - she didn't know much about river fishing, about whether fast moving rivers or slow ones were the best places to catch fish. It probably depended on the species and none of the ones she even had a passing familiarity with would be around today.

They moved downstream, Connor catching hold of her hand occasionally to help her over the undergrowth, where it was thickest and most tangled. She didn't actually need his help but there was something sweet about it, about the fact that he reached for her without thinking about it, his focus on picking his own way through.

And it was nice, feeling his fingers wrapping around hers.

They finally reached a wide stone platform, jutting out over the river. To her eyes it looked like an absolutely perfect place to stop and it seemed that Connor was of the same mind because he let go of her hand and started to unwind the hank of wire he'd stuffed into his pocket.

It gave her time to explore, examining the layout of the land with the kind of interest she hadn't had the time or the energy to indulge in before now. The sheet of rock they stood on was angled down so that one end dipped below the surface, the water lapping placidly at its edges. She moved closer to that edge, staring down into where the rock sank into silt, the water clear here, not as heavy with silt as it had been further up the river or further out, where the river ran deeper. There were plants, even here, roots buried in the silt and rising up to twist over them, joining the wide canopy. The river was wide though, so that the plants - trees and ferns intermingling - that tangled together on each bank didn't meet in the middle. There was room for the sun to come through, dappling the water. Overhead, giant insects droned; a dragonfly - huge but no less beautiful for it - dipped down towards the water, its wings brilliant blue in the sunlight.

It was peaceful. She would never have believed that she could think that about this world but it was.

She took a second to enjoy the moment, letting it sink into her, before turning back to Connor. He'd untangled his line and was now straightening it out. As she watched, he reached the makeshift hook, pulling something out of his pocket to put on it. She moved closer, curious, and he looked up with a sheepish smile.

"I wasn't really hungry anyway," he said, still concentrating on pushing her earring through the piece of shellfish flesh. It didn't look easy and she resisted the urge to try and help him. She resisted the urge to do other things too, like push his hair out of his face or...

She turned away, staring back out over the still, deep water. The dragonfly had gone now, although she hadn't seen it pass overhead, and nothing else was stirring.

There was another quiet plink and Connor came up to stand beside her, one end of the wire wrapped around his hand. The other end was now in the water, and she supposed it was just a question of waiting for something to show some interest. The day was hot, but a cool breeze came off the river and compensated for the heat of the day, cooling it to something bearable. It made her sleepy. She settled down on the rock, letting that warmth seep into her, for once letting go of everything else - the constant hunger and thirst and fear. Connor settled down beside her, his thigh pressing against her knee, and she closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that he was there, and drifted for a while, listening to the quiet around them.

There was a bird in the bush, somewhere. It called out, the cry loud and bright against the silence, and she opened her eyes. The shadows had shifted a little, and Connor was pulling the wire in, his expression serious but not yet concerned. Her stomach rumbled and her bum was numb; she shifted position on the rock and Connor glanced at her, giving her a quick smile, before he cast his line out again, further this time. It hit the water underneath a low hanging branch and she watched the lure slowly sink down into the depths.

Maybe the fish of this river thought that the shellfish was as tasteless as she and Connor did. But she couldn't keep on sitting here, doing nothing, especially not if Connor's fishing was unsuccessful. Connor's leg was still warm against her, and she really wanted lean into him, more than she already was, but there was a restless energy building in her, thrumming through her veins. It had been too long since she'd simply sat and done nothing, not with the pressing need for survival chivvying her along. Sitting idle felt wrong and she had no idea how long she'd dozed.

She cast her eyes about, this time paying more attention to their surroundings. Maybe there was something she'd overlooked, something edible. There didn't seem to be much in the way of fruit or seeds, nothing except the leaves, but over by the water, where she'd been standing earlier, there were reeds growing up, thick and straight and tall. They looked a little like bulrushes crossed with cotton or maybe toned down dandelions, the ends tufting into coarse white feathery strands. At some point she'd have to stop thinking of things in those terms, relating them to things that were familiar and spoke of home. She stared at them numbly for a moment and then...

She could feel the weight of her stone knife resting against her leg and an idea formed slowly in her mind. She rose to her feet, feeling Connor's eyes following her as she moved, and walked over to the edge, settling back down next to the reeds.

They were tougher than they looked, resistant to the knife's edge, as sharp as Connor had tried to make it. She'd worked up quite a sweat by the time she'd managed to saw through the first batch, her fingers and palms stinging from where the tough fibres had cut into her hands.

Connor was watching her curiously, his attention torn between what she was doing and paying attention to the line he had played out. Not that he was getting much in the way of bites, but she'd hate for him to miss it if something did nibble on his lure. She took her reeds back to him and sat next to him, crossing her legs and pulling them across her lap, thinking hard.

He made room for her, switching his attention between the water and what she was trying to do. She wasn't even sure what that was except for the vaguest outline she had in her mind. She pulled the reeds this way and that, the shape she had in mind firming, and then she started to bend them, weaving them together, while Connor continued to play the line out.

It wasn't entirely successful. By the time she'd finished her first attempt, it was rather lopsided and misshapen, and she suspected that it wouldn't hold any weight. But this was all trial and error, wasn't it? Even now, she was reconsidering the shape she had in mind, pulling the physical structure in various directions and thinking about support struts maybe, or thinner reeds or vines to weave in and out of those she'd cut, to make a sturdier shape.

"It's... a basket?" Connor offered and she grinned, nudging him with her shoulder.

"It's an attempt at one, yeah."

"Hey." He nudged her back. "It's a really good attempt." His face, when she glanced up at him, was open, smiling widely in spite of his lack of success.

She looked out over the water, searching for - and spotting - the point where his line had gone in.

"No luck?"

"Nah." It was only now he started to look a little dispirited. "Looks like we're back to not-scallops and not-tasty seaweed." He tugged again on the line. "Know what I really want?"

She knew what was coming. "Oh, don't." It didn't stop him.

"Pizza."

Her stomach growled again. "Pepperoni," she said.

"Stuffed crust." It wasn't making anything better - if anything, her stomach just protested even more loudly. Connor didn't seem to hear it. "You know what? When we get home, the first thing I'm going to do is go to Pizza Hut. The all you can eat buffet."

Oh God. Her mouth was watering and another wave of homesickness washed over it. She swallowed it down, tried to lighten things up, as much for her sake as his. "I think you probably need to have a shower first," she teased, nudging him again, and he smiled, a little wistfully. "And a shave."

"So, I'll order in. Have a shower while they deliver." His smile ebbed away. "When we get home," he added, his voice dropping to a low murmur.

"They do pepperoni stuffed crust now, you know," she offered, like that was going to help any.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, pulling her knees up again and wrapping her arms around them. "We'll get mushrooms too. And garlic bread. Lots of it."

"Yeah." He tugged on his line again and she didn't miss the way that he leaned fractionally into her, just for a moment, a warm pressure against her side before it was gone. She played with the strands of reed by her side, the tufts that she'd pulled off, because it was better than going completely girly and just begging him for a hug.

He'd give her one, she knew, and he probably wouldn't try for more. It had been ages since Connor had flirted with her like that. She'd blown him off too many times when he'd just been the geeky undergrad and her focus had been on the lean and competent form of Stephen. Back before she'd realised where her attention really should have been, who she really fit with.

She loved Stephen, she supposed. In a way. As a mate. But Connor...

She looked out over the river and caught sight of another insect this time, something not quite like a beetle but the shape lacking the lean lines of a dragonfly. It buzzed low across the water, and its wings beat so fast that they blurred, the movements coming together until it looked like it had two tufts sprouting from its body where its wings should be.

Her fingers stroked idly along the lines of the reed heads and then...

"Connor?"

"Hmm? You know, I don't think we're going to catch anything here." He looked up and down the riverbank, as though that was going to magically provide some inspiration. "Maybe there aren't any fish. Maybe the crocodiles have eaten them all."

"Oh, don't," she said again, frowning this time, and he looked over at her, mouthing a silent 'sorry' when he realised that the comment really had disconcerted her.

"Maybe," she said, by way of an acceptance of his apology, "we just need to make the lure look more like a fly."

"You mean like fly fishing?"

"No, Connor. I mean like pigeon fishing."

He rolled his eyes at that before shooting her another grin. "D'you have something in mind?"

She held up one of the reed heads, twisting it around and around in the air so that the tufts flapped. They didn't look much like flies, but they looked more like flies than her earring did. Besides, fish were stupid, weren't they?

Connor looked dubious but sighed in a long suffering way, one that would have got him a quick kick up the backside if she'd had either the energy or the inclination.

"What are we going to use to tie it on?"

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. Like that was the worst of their problems.

In the end, they settled on a blade of one of the long grasses that grew along the bank, wrapping it around and around the lure, tucking it over and under until it looked like it would hold. The end result sort of looked like a fly. If you were extremely short-sighted and thought that flies were sort of lopsided and green.

She just hoped that any fish that there were lurking nearby, assuming that there were any and that Connor's mythical crocodiles - she shuddered at the thought - hadn't eaten them all, were fooled.

Connor threw his line out again. The foliage they'd wrapped around it wouldn't let it sink this time so it floated on the surface, bobbing up and down. Connor pulled it in slowly, leaving ripples in its wake, and then he cast it out again, further this time so that once again it landed with a soft plop underneath the low hanging branches, leaning over the water on the other bank.

The seventh or eighth time he did it, something dark moved under the surface and then the lure disappeared, tugged down into the depths.

Her fingers tightened on Connor's arm, digging in. "Don't lose it," she whispered, her eyes fixed on the point where the lure had vanished. "Connor..."

"Shut up," he whispered back, his more like a stage whisper, the lines of his body tense and his face focused, his jaw jutting out the way it did when he was worked up about something. He started to pull the line in, slowly, hand over hand and she grew more and more tense the closer whatever it was grew to the shore.

And then she could see it, a distinct fish like shape, something brown in the brownish water, well camouflaged. It wasn't huge but even so - fish. Something new and something edible, which was a hell of a lot more than they'd had before.

She took in a deep breath and held it in, watching the brown shape move closer and closer to the bank as Connor gently played the line, not tugging too hard in case their makeshift hook slipped loose. And then it was there, right next to the bank, and she couldn't wait any longer. She left Connor pulling the line tight and scooted down to the edge of their rock, leaning over to slide her hands underneath their fish and flip it out.

It landed with a wet slap on the rock, splashing the pair of them with water and fish slime as it flopped about, its mouth gaping and its gills opening and shutting frantically. Connor grabbed for it as it started to slide back down towards the river, falling down onto his knees with a crack that made her wince in sympathy, and she came up on its other side, her knife in her hands. One sharp blow to the back of its head and its thrashing eased. A second blow and it was down to quivering. She couldn't feel any sympathy for it, not when the hunger was a constant presence in both of their lives.

It finally stilled, only giving an occasional twitch, and the gaping mouth slackened. She sat back on her heels, panting heavily in spite of the oxygen rich atmosphere, and just stared at it.

It looked like a fish. Just a normal, boring brown fish, with gills and scales and fins and a tail. It was the only thing they'd seen so far that wasn't subtly wrong in some way, at least to her eyes. And as for Connor...

Like her, he was panting, either with effort or excitement or both, but he was still managing to grin, wide and bright, ear to ear and his eyes were just lit up like a little kid's. He was staring down at the fish - the fish he'd caught, that between them they'd caught with nothing but an earring and some imagination. And a hell of a lot of determination when it came to that.

Her mouth widened at the thought until her grin was as bright and broad as his. "Well done, you," she said, unable to hold in the excitement, the sheer thrill of it all, any longer. "Well done!"

He finally tore his eyes away from the fish but his grin didn't dampen any as he looked up at her and then held up his palm in the classic high five gesture. She met it, pressing their palms together and matching his grin with one of her own.

"So," he said, staring back down at his fish and looking for all the world like he was resisting the urge to stroke it. "Want to try catching another one?"

She laughed, the sound bubbling up from deep within her, and his grin - impossibly - widened even further.

"I mean," he continued, "now that you've made that basket, it'd be a pity not to fill it."

She swiped at him and he ducked, but his grin still didn't dim. Neither did hers as she watched him ease the hook out of the fish's mouth. It had held up pretty well, although the makeshift body they'd patched together hadn't survived; it was slimy and mangled, and looked even less like a fly than it had before. She left Connor dealing with that; if he was going to catch more, they would need something to carry the fish home with them and while her first attempt hadn't been much cop, she wasn't going to quit trying. Quitters never won, as her mum said, and the fact that Connor had persevered and succeeded made her even more determined. The reed bed beckoned, and she needed to wash the fish's blood from her blade and her hands anyway.

As she rinsed both in the water, she spotted something on the riverbed, something bright and glittering. For a moment, she thought it was a trick of the light but it stayed steady, even as the water moved around it.

She reached down, plucking the rock from the riverbed and thinking that this was it, this was the point where their luck changed for the better.

"Connor...?"

Something dark came out of the water, something dark and huge and hungry. She screamed, she knew she did, scrabbling backwards, kicking out desperately with her feet and just trying to get **away**.

One of her feet struck it and it turned its head but she was already further up the rock, moving like a crab, back and up and away, breath now panting in her throat, her mind a constant, fear-driven litany of, "_Bigbigbig... oh God... Oh God..._"

She was out of reach, surely she was out of reach, God, she had to be out of reach because it was a fish, a massive, insanely big fish but a fish and fish couldn't get that far out of the water and then it used its fins to haul itself further up the bank and its jaws opened and fish shouldn't have teeth like that, shouldn't be that big and still look like a fish, not a shark and... and... and...

And Connor's hands grabbed her, pulling her further up the bank, his breath panting harshly in her ear and his grip painfully tight as he tugged and pulled her and the fish's too sharp teeth closed over where her foot had been.

She grabbed at Connor, using her flailing feet to leverage her further up the bank, never taking her eyes off the monstrosity that had appeared out of nowhere, and it heaved itself sideways, one huge black eye rolling at her as it disappeared back into the water. She was going to see that eye in her dreams, in her nightmares; it was going to follow her down into the dark each and every night.

"Abby." Connor was rocking her, hands still gripping her tightly as he whispered her name over and over again into her hair. "Abby."

She stared at the ripples it had left behind, huge rings of them disturbing the river, marring its surface from bank to bank. She'd thought was placid, she'd thought... It wasn't. It wasn't. Nothing here was.

"I lost my knife," she said numbly.

Connor's grip tightened and he made a sound like a sob. "I'll make you a new one. Abby, I promise, okay?"

She nodded, her eyes still watching those circles. "You lost your fish too," she whispered and Connor didn't answer her this time, just held on tight while his body shook against hers.

Her fingers were hurting and she opened her hand, staring down numbly at the bright rock sitting in her palm. Iron pyrite - fool's gold.

And then the rain came down again, like it did every night; sheets of water that sounded like the hissing of snakes. It pelted against the surface of the water until she couldn't see the rings anymore, had no idea where that thing had disappeared to. Connor hitched her further up the bank, pulling her to her feet and pulling her closer, wrapping his arms tight around her. She was glad for the rain, glad that it hid the tears that were now streaming down her face, shock and grief and rage all mixed up together and all pouring out. Glad that it hid any tears that there may have been on Connor's face too because she couldn't do this, she wasn't strong enough to do this for both of them, she wasn't.

She wanted to go home. Go home to pizza and her mum and to where the only type of fish she had to deal with were the ones that came in newspaper.

It had been two weeks. Two weeks in a world where even the fish were monsters, where nothing, nothing was right. Where everything was wrong.

Two weeks, and no one was coming. No one. They were all alone, were always going to be alone; nothing but her and Connor and the rain.

**Day 6**

It was raining again. Nick's office was near the roof, tucked out of the way of the hustle and bustle that typified a normal day at the ARC, and he was one of the few lucky enough to have a window. The rain streamed down it, droplets joining until they formed trails, until everything outside was obscured and the only sound he could hear was the white noise of it drumming against the roof.

He turned his attention away from the window and back to his laptop screen where the video he'd found, taken at one of the early anomaly sites, was streaming over the network.

Abby's face smiled back at him, her eyes crinkling at something Connor was undoubtedly saying. It had to be Connor - the camera was bouncing around too much for it to be Stephen. Out of all of them, only Connor grew that excited, so excited that he couldn't even keep still.

Stephen loomed into the frame, the expression on his face amused and tolerant. Definitely Connor behind the camera then - only Connor got that indulgent expression, even these days. And then Stephen reached up, around the camera, taking it back from whoever had been holding it.

He'd been right - it had been Connor. He appeared in shot, heading straight for Abby, of course, and wearing that bloody stupid hat. Nick's throat ached at the sight of the pair of them, teasing each other and just happy. Safe.

"Cutter?"

He looked up into Jenny's face, poised in the doorway but for once not barging straight in. She twisted her face apologetically.

"Sorry. Anomaly on the south-east coast. Lester wants us to move out as soon as possible, okay?"

He hadn't even heard the alarm, drowned out as it was by the driving rain.

"Okay," he said, nodding at her just to reinforce that. She gave him a searching look but didn't comment, just dipped her head and moved away, probably to find Stephen.

Nick looked back at his laptop screen, where Connor was now leaning into Abby, pointing out something just off screen. There was no need for him to lean that closely and Nick didn't need to see the wistful yearning expression that crossed his face as Abby looked away, in the direction he was pointing, to know exactly why he had.

And then Stephen, like any good scientist, moved the camera towards whatever it was that Connor had pointed out and the pair of them disappeared from view completely.

Nick reached up and grasped the lid of the laptop, closing it down and waiting for the blinking lights to tell him that it had gone into hibernation mode before he finally stood up and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair.

Five days, maybe six if they were unlucky, and they'd have Abby and Connor back.

Five days, maybe six. He counted them down. Five days, maybe six; that was all.

He wasn't much of a praying man, but he prayed for that.

**End Book One.**


	5. Chapter 5

_cause things ain't how they used to be_

**Day 17**

"I want to go back to the anomaly site."

Abby tensed, feeling the burn of it in her shoulders, all the way down to where her fingers were resting against her shins. Her fingers curled, digging into the flesh of her legs. Connor's voice was low and he was refusing to look at her, preferring to watch his hands digging into the sand, parting his fingers to let the grains trickle through.

She'd been expecting this. No. She'd been expecting something **like** this if not this exactly but it didn't make it any less frustrating. She didn't need it - neither of them did. She - both of them - were exhausted, worn down to the bone it felt like and... she really didn't need Connor to be an idiot about it.

Intellectually she understood where he was coming from. She'd felt safe yesterday, just for those few short hours of peace, and then life had reared up and reminded her brutally that there was no such thing as safety, not here. She was probably grieving for it or some other psychological claptrap. She'd picked up enough from the magazines her mother had devoured when Abby had been young enough to still live in the same house to be able to categorise it along those lines.

But she was beginning to realise that understanding something intellectually and actually **feeling** it were two different things.

She took a deep breath and stretched out her fingers, sliding them down her shins. They left red crescents behind where they'd dug too deeply into the skin. They weren't deep enough to bleed and they'd fade. She could only hope that this weirdness between Connor and her would fade eventually too. As it was, she had no idea how to handle it, and it was all too easy to put the walls up and go on the defensive. Against Connor, of all people.

But then Connor had barely spoken to her since yesterday and she was already narked at him because of it. She didn't want to have to deal with it, or with him. She was too bloody shattered to deal with it. She wanted...

Her fingers started to curl again, twitching with irritation and exhaustion, and she took another deep breath, staring out at the ocean. She didn't know what she wanted, not exactly, but it wasn't to be given the cold shoulder by Connor. It wasn't like Connor to hold a grudge - not for long - and **he** hadn't been in any danger yesterday. The thought of it made her breath hitch in her throat, set her heart pounding in her chest and she took another deep breath, holding it down and uncurling her fingers, trying to let go of that tension.

She didn't deserve this. Any of it - Connor's attitude or the fear that woke her up countless times in the night, imagining teeth and claws tearing her apart. She didn't deserve it but she had no idea how to deal with a Connor who wasn't talking to her. He needed to pull his head out of his backside and realise that.

"We can't," she snapped, finally looking at him because **she** wasn't going to be the one who was being petty. Her tone probably wasn't helping the situation any but... but it wasn't **her** being an idiot. She wasn't the one who wasn't talking to **him**. The unfairness of it made her jaw clench until her teeth ached.

Connor's jaw tensed too, she could see it in the muscle twitching in his cheek, but he still wouldn't look at her. She had to stop herself from ripping his stupid face off, taking more deep, even breaths until the homicidal impulses had died down to something more manageable.

The air still tasted wrong, even after all this time, and that didn't help either.

"If the anomaly opens again -"

"If the anomaly opens again, we'll see it."

She snapped the words out, fast and furiously, and he flinched. He was still avoiding her eyes and she felt a brief pang of regret for her tone before she tamped it down, stamping on it ruthlessly. She wanted him to at least **look** at her instead of glaring out over the ocean. She deserved that much, at least. Didn't she?

She was building up to fight, she knew it, all of her fear and frustration bubbling up and looking for release, and Connor was looking like a pretty good target, especially when he kept sticking his stupid head up above the bloody parapet. Especially when he wouldn't even **look** at her. But knowing the reasons for her anger and her irritation didn't help much. Nothing was helping. It was all churning up in her, tight in her chest and her shoulders, and she didn't know how to deal with it, not with this. Not with things that were spiralling so far and so fast out of her control. Kicking Connor's backside was better than being the girl and bursting into tears. If she did that, Connor might feel like he had to look after her and then where would they be? He'd be crap at it.

Wouldn't he?

Maybe he wouldn't be crap at it and that was another one of the things she didn't want to think about. It would be too easy to give into the impulse, to lean on him more than she was already doing. That would just drown the pair of them. She... cared for him, maybe, even when he was being moronic. Even when they were fighting and his stubbornness was making her teeth - and her heart - ache. But she wasn't stupid. She wished she could be but she knew he wasn't strong enough, not to hold the pair of them up, even if he wanted to. She'd like to believe that he could but... It was better to jut her jaw out, just like Connor, and glare at the side of his stupid head than it was to give in. Or even give up, like he was doing.

He took a deep breath and said, "Abby -"

"Connor." So what if she mimicked his tone, using the same intonation but giving it an extra whiny twist? It got a reaction, and that helped. It was all she really wanted right then, just something that told her that he was there, with her, paying attention. He turned to look at her, his mouth a thin line and his eyes hot.

"What if we don't see it?"

Trust Connor to get stubborn now. Why couldn't he have waited just a bit longer before he grew a spine?

"We will."

She hated him for making her doubt that, even for a second.

"But what if we **don't**?" His tone was heated now too as she pushed herself to her feet, getting closer to him like she could physically drive the message home. He wasn't going to let it drop and she hated him just a little bit more for that, feeling it swirl around inside her, hot and acidic. It was better than the emptiness that had been there before. "What if... what if it already had opened and we just don't know about it? What if someone's come through, Abby?"

"What if they have?" And there it was, the doubt, spilling out of her mouth like she couldn't stop it, burning all the way. And she **couldn't** stop it, no matter how hard she tried to tamp it down and that was his fault too, all that fear bubbling up behind it. She couldn't lean on him, she couldn't and she couldn't help but let him lean on her, just a little. "What if they have come through and what if they went straight back? What if they've given up?"

He rocked back like she'd hit him and maybe she had, sort of. She'd been shouting by the end and even now she could hear the echoes of it coming back. Or perhaps that was just her imagination - her imagination and her guilty conscience, following hard on the heels of her outburst. Maybe it was just Connor's stunned silence that made the words sound like they rang on and on.

It was too late to take them back now.

"They wouldn't," he whispered and it was drowned out by the rushing of blood in her ears. "Abby, they wouldn't."

"No?" Her voice was harsh, tearing at her throat. Her sinuses felt tight again, and her eyes prickled and burnt and neither of those things had anything to do with the too bright sun or the salt rich air. She took all of that, twisted it into something sharp and hard and hit him with it. "Sure about that, are you, Connor?"

He didn't rock back on his heels this time but his eyes widened, his face shocked and slack as he processed it. She hated herself for that but wouldn't - couldn't - let go of her anger, not when it was the only thing keeping her going. Not when everything else was going to drag her down if she **didn't** find something to keep her moving.

"Abby." His voice was barely above a whisper and she had to strain to hear him over the sound of the surf. But she couldn't walk away, not with Connor looking at her like that, like she'd ripped away everything that was holding him up. She wasn't that much of a bitch. "Abby, if we stay here, we'll die."

"Connor." Again she mimicked his inflection, but it wasn't something she'd done consciously. It just... came out like that, just as pleading as her name had been on his lips. She leaned in closer, getting into his personal space but the anger was slipping away from her, sliding through her fingers like the sand had slid through Connor's and just leaving the grief and the fear behind. "Walking back to the anomaly would be suicide." Why couldn't he understand that?

"No." He took a step back, shaking his head stubbornly. His eyes never left hers even while he was backing away from her. "We've got to... Abby, what if they come through and they don't know where we are? What if they don't know where to look?"

"We left markers." That had been his idea and why did he have so little faith in them now? She couldn't help but feel cheated by that as another one of the few things holding her up was stripped away. "Connor..."

He was shaking his head now, his eyes never leaving her face, but he wasn't disagreeing with her. At least not on that point, she didn't think.

"It's not enough." His voice cracked a little and she pretended to ignore it, her own nerves stripped too raw to have anything left over for him. "They won't know how far we've gone, or even if we're alive. Abby, we've got to give them more. We've got to."

"We've got no way of carrying any water." She said it slowly, spelling it out to him because that seemed to be what he needed to finally get it. "We've got no spare food. For God's sake, Connor, we're living hand to mouth and we're barely coping as it is and you want to what? Go trekking back the way we came just in case there's something more we can do? When we barely made it this far, never mind going back. Rainwater and no food, Connor. Remember?"

He didn't answer her but his eyes dropped and he was back to not looking at her, his jaw set stubbornly. But there were shadows under his eyes, dark bruises put there by the days they'd spent scrubbing around, desperate to survive. This... this place was hard and dangerous but it was better than the alternative. Why couldn't he get that?

"It would be suicide and I'm not ready to die for it. Are you?"

He wouldn't answer her, but he was staring across the bay, back towards where they'd come through, and that was answer enough. She felt the tears stinging behind her eyes, in the back of her nose and throat, and held on with everything she had left, which wasn't much.

"If you go..." She said it softly but the words still came out razor sharp, honed by her grief and her fear. "If you go, Connor, I'm not going with you."

Again, that got a reaction, Connor's head whipping around to stare at her, his eyes widening again and that look on his face, the one that said she'd struck home. She met his gaze just long enough so that he could see the truth of her statement and then she turned away, unable to look at him any longer, and trudged back up the beach towards their tiny shelter.

Connor didn't follow her and that... that finally broke her.

She didn't bother to stop the tears this time but they dried quickly, sucked up by the heat of the day. They were gone by the time she'd reached the safety of their cave.

She sat down heavily on the sandy floor inside, no longer able to deny to herself that she was hiding, and stared out into the blinding sunlight for long minutes until her vision blurred again. It was cooler in here than outside and there was nothing to dry the tears this time. She let them fall; Connor wouldn't see them.

Connor wasn't coming back.

It was too big a thought for her brain to cope with. It should have terrified her, or infuriated her, or both, but instead she was just... empty. Frozen. Drained of everything including hope.

Connor wasn't coming back and she sat there, her bum slowly going numb on the cool, damp sand, staring out at the brutal sundrenched landscape as the shadows grew longer and shifted across the sky.

She wanted...

If she left now, maybe...

It had been hours but Connor wasn't fast. She could catch up, if she could find the energy to move, the will to. Connor...

Connor had **left** her. He'd just... left her. She wanted to think that he'd come back, that he'd make it to the anomaly site in one piece and do whatever he felt he had to and then come back to her, safe and sound, but even if he did, even if he came back... he'd left her.

That was an even bigger thought to cope with and she just... couldn't.

The shadows outside shifted again and she pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and blinking several times. Time had done what the coolness of the cave couldn't; her face felt stiff with salt where the tears had finally dried and her eyes were gummy and tired.

This time it was a noise outside, not a shadow moving, and she froze in place, every part of her body tensing. It came again, a low scratching sound, and she began to push herself upright, all of her muscles protesting, stiffened by hours of inactivity. It slowed her down, all except for her heart, which beat fast and furious. She reached into her pocket but Connor had the pocket knife, his knife. Connor had **left** with his knife and, in spite of his promises, he hadn't made her another flint one.

Connor... God, she'd been so worried about him, even while furious with him, and now... he'd never know what happened. And he'd **promised**.

She finally made it to her feet, determined that, whatever the hell it was that had chosen to investigate, she was going to meet it head on. She might not have had the knife any longer, but she had her feet and her fists and, if it came to that, her teeth.

She wasn't going down without a fight. Not Abby Maitland.

Another soft, scraping sound and then the clatter of driftwood falling to the floor. It startled her; she hadn't been ready for it, in spite of her mental psyching of herself up, and it made her jump, her rabbit-fast heart skipping a beat.

When Connor finally appeared, outlined against the bright sun outside, she almost took his stupid head off before she realised that it was him and not something with teeth and claws.

The relief of that almost finished her entirely. It took everything she had not to collapse into a sobbing heap but Connor didn't deserve that and it would freak him out. The thought was enough - just - to keep her on her feet.

She couldn't make out his expression at first, not when he was only a silhouette and her heart was still pounding in her chest, making her pant more with shock and fear than exertion. But the he shifted to the side, moving a little away from her and eyeing her uncertainly.

He looked wrecked, as wretched as she felt and she stared at him wordlessly, shocked into silence. His face fell even further when she still said nothing and he slumped back against the rock before his legs seemed to give out and he slumped gracelessly to the floor. He wasn't looking at her now, instead staring off into space but there was no stubbornness in him, not this time.

The wood was scattered around his feet and she took a step forward, then two, her heart refusing to slow down any. She swallowed, and still he didn't move, wouldn't even look up at her. There was defeat in every line of his body, from his slumped shoulders to the hands that hung loosely between his knees, his clever fingers still for once.

It didn't feel like a victory; if anything, she felt like she'd lost. She was exhausted, scared and sad, too wrung out to be more than simply glad that he was here.

She took a couple of steps towards him on legs that shook too much for her comfort, still struck dumb by the fact that he was here, that he'd come back. She had no idea how far he'd got before he'd turned around. She didn't care.

He'd come back.

Only, once she could see beyond the margins of the cave, she realised that he'd never left. The sun had moved and was lower in the sky now, no longer blinding her, but there was still more than enough daylight left to make out the small, neat piles of driftwood placed near the cave, closer and closer to it. How many times had he come back and she'd not heard him, so convinced that he'd gone and left her behind? How many times had he ventured closer before his courage failed, and he made a neat pile before going to collect more wood until he felt he had enough?

Some men brought flowers. Trust Connor to get it so wrong and so right at the same time. Any lingering resentment she'd been feeling evaporated; there was no room for it, not now. There was only room for relief, relief that he was still here, that he hadn't left her. That he wasn't headed on a fool's errand but was here, with her, as safe as either of them could be. Relief and a little shame.

Connor hadn't moved and she swallowed again, opening her mouth before she realised that she had nothing to say, nothing that would make this better.

"I meant it, you know," he said. He still wouldn't look at her, his eyes unfocused as he stared into the distance. "What I said."

"Connor..." She tried to hold onto the relief - and some of the shame - anything that would let her keep a hold of her temper this time. Her temper and her tongue. He didn't deserve anything less. "I was... It's too dangerous..." She didn't even try to disguise her pleading as anything else, no anger to mask it this time.

He didn't seem to hear her. Or see her, for that matter, not with the way in which his eyes stayed unfocused. Unfocused and too bright, too wet for her peace of mind.

"I mean... I meant what I said when we first came through the anomaly," he said, stuttering slightly over the words and still not looking at her. It sucked all of the words right out of her, leaving her hollow and shaking. "I... I can't lose you. I..." He trailed off, the tears he'd been trying to hold back finally falling, and he scrubbed his sleeve impatiently across his face, still refusing to look at her. "I'm not... You're my best mate, Abby, and I'm not going to be weird about it, okay? I promise."

He didn't seem to really want an answer to that, which was good because she was still lost, still searching for something, anything to say that would make this all right for him. Like anything could when, like her, it seemed he'd just been pushed too far.

"I just..." And words seemed to fail him too as he wiped the tears away again. "I needed you to know that, yeah? That I wouldn't go anywhere without you."

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, her own eyes welling up. "Okay," she whispered, the word coming out fractured, almost as broken as Connor. "You're my best mate too, Connor." The 'I'm sorry' went unsaid, more because if she said another word she would cry and then it would get all messy and complicated.

He finally looked up, giving her a watery smile that failed completely to hit the mark. The look in his eyes was still wretched, and, again, there were no words that she could find to make it any better. He didn't hold her eyes for long before nodding and swallowing his remaining tears down, using his sleeve to wipe his nose this time rather than his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet, still not meeting her eyes, and sniffed loudly.

"It's..." His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat, sniffing again. "There's a couple of hours of light still left. We should probably... um... try and find something to eat. Make up the fire for the night." He hadn't phrased any of that as questions but he still glanced sideways at her, checking that she was okay with that, and she managed to muster up a small smile for him from somewhere, her heart breaking all over again. The smile felt strained around the edges, like it didn't fit on her face quite right, stretching the skin of her cheeks where they were still stiff from her own crying jag.

Connor's answering smile was no better but it was better than silence would have been. He didn't hold her gaze for long, his eyes skittering around to pan across the beach as he swallowed again, nervously, rubbing his hands against his thighs for a moment before letting them hang by his sides.

She couldn't find the words to help, but then she'd always favoured actions over them. She caught the hand nearest to her and squeezed his fingers gently, giving him another smile, small and serious this time, when he looked over at her.

It wasn't much, but this time Connor's answering smile was a little less fractured; still small and sad but less broken. He squeezed her hand back for a second before releasing it and moving away, just a couple of steps, his focus supposedly on the beach and the search for food.

She wasn't fooled and she'd be lying - to herself if not to anyone else - if she'd said it didn't hurt. But it was a dull ache, a soft and sad one, rather than the bone deep, stabbing one of his absence. And if she was that raw... well, she couldn't blame him for wanting to keep his distance for the moment. Not this time, anyway.

But it didn't mean she was about to let him out of her sight.

This time when he headed down the beach, she followed him. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Day 7**

Nick was on his fourth cup of coffee by the time that the ARC's lights switched over from their night-time settings to the brighter lights of day. They were too bright for Nick and he blinked a little as they flickered on over his head, wiping his hand tiredly over his face before taking another gulp from the cup he held. His watch might insist that day had dawned but his body clock was still mired in the depths of night and he was getting too old to pull all-nighters.

The coffee had gone cold but he swallowed it anyway. It didn't help much. Nothing helped much at the moment but that didn't mean he wasn't going to make the effort. But as soon as the bitter taste hit his tongue he knew this was one effort that was going to be wasted, and he finally pushed himself away from his desk to go in search of a fresher cup, one that tasted less like burnt acorns.

It took him a few moments to get going, and not all of that was due to the early hour. Too little activity and too much stress. Or he really was getting too bloody old for this gig. But at least there wasn't anyone around to see him staggering out of his door, willing his legs to loosen up. The lights may have switched over but it was still early and the ARC was quiet, almost eerily empty. The night staff were packing up, ready to go home, and the day staff had not yet started to trickle in.

He was safe for an hour or so at least, by his reckoning, at least until he realised that it wasn't just the lights in the main body of the ARC that were on. In spite of the early hour, Lester was already in his office when Nick strolled back towards his sanctuary, fresh cup of coffee clutched to his chest like it was the most precious thing in the world.

Damn it. Nick ducked his head, trying not to catch the man's attention, hoping that whatever paperwork had dragged Lester in at this hour would keep him engrossed until Nick was safely past the window. Didn't the man ever sleep? Nick was really starting to believe not, given that Lester was here even more often than Nick and that was saying something. Maybe Connor was on the ball with his blood-sucking vampire comparisons, the ones Nick had always pretended not to find funny, not wanting to do anything that encouraged Connor to ramble on more than he already did.

But when Connor got back, he'd have to share that observation with him, let Connor know that he got it now. Connor would get a kick out of it.

He made it to the far side of the glass window separating Lester's office from the rest of the hurly burly of the ARC without Lester seeming to notice, much to his relief. He'd had to deal with Jenny all night, meaning that in spite of the hour he'd had his fill of bureaucracy already today and didn't feel like a repetition. Jenny had been in far from fine fettle; it had been cold, dark and wet at the coast, something that Jenny had commented on at length and high volume. He could sympathise to some extent; after freezing their balls off nothing had come through the anomaly, which was a let down after the heavy-handed way they had gone in, complete with extensive backup at a no doubt exorbitant cost. He half expected Lester to be commenting on that today, a rant probably just as long and at just as high a volume as Jenny's night-time sharing of her feelings for all that it had been Lester's decision in the first place. Didn't want to lose any more of his scientific team, he suspected, and there was resentment in the thought.

He could have used the distraction of something dangerous coming through last night, or this morning. Something with teeth and claws to take the edge off this mingled feeling of impatience and helplessness. He suspected that they all could, but he wasn't paid enough - or stupid enough - to deal with Lester before breakfast. There was only so much sarcasm a man could take on an empty stomach, especially when old, cold coffee wasn't the only bitter thing he'd had to swallow recently.

He continued to skirt his way along the top platform that wound its way around the interior of the ARC, sipping absently at his cup of coffee as he watched the day staff finally file in one by one. He wasn't the only one greeting the day with caffeine. Stephen was down there, too, leaning against the wall, his own cup clutched negligently in his hand. There was something about his pose - deceptively relaxed - that had Nick tensing, looking around for whatever Stephen's sharp eyes had caught. Stephen, it seemed, was watching Leek as the man walked through the door, already fussing with a big sheaf of paperwork.

Nick's spider senses started tingling - another thought, another phrase he must have picked up from Connor via osmosis in the time he'd spent with his ex-student - and he began to head down the ramp towards the floor. He was too late; even as his foot stepped off the ramp and came to rest on the cold, concrete floor, Stephen pushed himself away from the wall and headed towards Leek, angling his path so that he intercepted him before Leek could reach the safety of his office.

Nick quickened his steps, eyeing the both of them. Stephen's body language stayed tense but that alone wasn't cause for alarm; they were both tense. In fact, the entire ARC seemed tense these days. It wasn't until Connor and Abby were both gone that Nick realised just how much of the ARC's space they took up and how much of a hole they left behind. No. What concerned Nick was the heated look on Stephen's face now; Stephen, who was normally so cool, calm and collected, who seemed to let most things flow off his back. Leek must have really pissed him off and this Nick had to see.

He might even have to break it up if the finger Stephen suddenly planted in the middle of Leek's chest was any indication.

Leek took a couple of steps back, Stephen following him, head bent low, close to Leek's face, speaking quietly but with an intensity that set all of Nick's alarm bells ringing. Not spider senses, not any more. These were full on blaring sirens.

"Stephen -"

Stephen didn't even turn his head, gave no sign that he was even aware that Nick was there, at least not outwardly, but Nick had known him too long to be fooled. He moved fractionally closer, waiting to see what Stephen would do, and even though this intensity on Stephen's part, this underlying simmering anger, wasn't familiar, the act of moving closer, waiting for Stephen's cue, was.

It hurt, just another reminder of how everything had changed.

"Leek," Stephen said eventually, never taking his eyes off the subject of conversation, "has apparently informed Captain Harrison that the ARC budget isn't infinite." His voice was even, almost calm, but he stayed far too close to Leek for Nick's comfort, even if his finger was no longer poking into Leek's chest.

Leek made a slightly disgruntled sound, his fingers smoothing along the line of his tie, straightening it again. He didn't seem at all perturbed by Stephen's outburst, his face also smoothing out into that slightly smug, condescending look that always made Nick want to plant his fist in it, to rearrange his features in the same way that Stephen had ruffled his clothes.

It took a second for Nick to place the name with a face and then he got it. Ryan's replacement - or maybe not. Maybe Harrison had always been here, in this version of the world, and it was Ryan who had been out of time. He'd never know which now that Ryan was dead.

Ryan had never even made it to this version of the world.

"I'm sorry," he said. "What's Harrison got to do with anything?"

It was Leek, not Stephen, who answered him.

"Well," Leek began, his tone as oily as always, "we are a publicly funded project, after all. We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to spend their tax monies wisely."

Stephen's breath hitched next to him but he barely twitched when Nick placed one hand on his arm, ready to stop him from landing a blow if needed. Nick was too bloody tired to work out what the hell Leek meant, and this whole situation was just draining him further.

"Okay, why don't we all pretend for a minute that I have no bloody idea what you're talking about and start from there?"

Stephen's bicep was like steel under his fingers and Leek smirked, eyes darting between them like the little weasel he was. He opened his mouth, probably to say something as smarmy as his expression, but this time Stephen beat him to it.

"Lester has decided to veto some of the equipment we need."

"I'd hardly say 'need'," Leek interrupted, moving to flick some invisible fluff off his sleeve, now that his tie was straightened to his apparent satisfaction.

Nick - tired of all of his posturing - wasn't in the mood to beat around the bush.

"Lester's already approved it."

"Within reason, I think you'll find." Leek's fingers smoothed down his tie again, probably to stop the little bastard from making air quotes. He looked the sort. "And I'm afraid that some of the equipment requisitioned doesn't really fit into the 'reasonableness' zone."

This time he did make air quotes, and Stephen's arm twitched. Nick tightened his grip instinctively, at least as much to prevent him taking a swing at Leek as to prevent Stephen.

"What equipment?" He didn't think that Stephen would requisition anything that wasn't required - the man was too used to the even tighter purse strings of academia. Harrison was an unknown quantity, at least to Nick, but he doubted the captain would exactly be asking for go-go dancers.

After a long pause, one in which Leek's smirking look at Stephen made Nick's fingers itch, Stephen answered, his voice toneless.

"RIBs," he said and then, at Nick's look, clarified, "rigid inflatable boats. Scuba gear. Marine survival equipment, spear guns, that type of thing. The stuff we'll need in an aquatic environment."

"The **expensive** stuff you say you need for an aquatic environment," Leek interjected, then added, "Assuming, of course, that you'll ever encounter another aquatic environment. And even if you do..." He spread his hands helplessly, "we already have boats."

"As I've already told you," Stephen spat out, his body language moving towards more openly aggressive as he shook off Nick's hand, "the boats we used at the reservoir aren't suited for oceanic use. They're too small - any wave size and we'd be swamped. We need something bigger but still portable."

Leek continued to smirk. "Something more expensive and as I've already told **you**, we simply don't have the budget for frivolities."

"It's not frivolities when you're talking about lives." Stephen's voice was rising and the morning shift, now trickling in, were turning to look at them as they passed.

Nick bit back on his instinctive agreement and rubbed his hand over his face, feeling the stubble catch at his fingers. "What if we just escalated this straight to Lester? Ask him whether he thinks a few pennies saved are worth losing more people..."

Leek bristled like a bantam, his eyes narrowing slightly as he rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. It would have been funny if anything about this whole fucked up situation could be.

"Sir James," he huffed, "is far too busy to be bothered with minor details."

This time it was Stephen who held Nick back, his fingers tightening on Nick's arm to the point of pain and bringing Nick back to his senses. "Abby and Connor," he growled, shaking Stephen's hand off much as Stephen had shook his off earlier, "are not 'minor details'. Nor are the lives of anyone going after them."

Perhaps it was something in the way that Leek's face cleared of irritation, the lines smoothing out into that insincere mask he wore day in and day out, but he knew Leek's response a beat before the man delivered it, his voice full of mock sympathy. "That's assuming, of course, that there's any chance of anyone going after them." Nick at least had the gratification of watching Leek take a step back, his hands spreading helplessly with a false look of piety on his face. "I'm sure that we're all hoping otherwise, but it does pay to be pragmatic in these cases."

"You little..."

He grabbed at Stephen as Stephen lunged past him, a look of fury on his face. God only knew why - maybe because he wanted to land his own punch - but it slowed Stephen down just long enough to stop him from doing anything irreversibly stupid.

"What on earth is going on here?"

Lester's dulcet tones cut across the tension and Stephen rocked back on his heels, turning away from Leek to face Lester instead, his face like stone and his eyes narrowed. After a second of watching Stephen warily, his hand still half raised, just in case Stephen made a lunge for him as well, Nick turned as well, dismissing Leek from his line of sight if not entirely from his thoughts.

He opened his mouth but once again Stephen beat him to it.

"We need the equipment you're refusing to requisition."

The words were hard and flat, and Nick recognised the tone - Stephen at his worst, brooking no argument and refusing to back down. Lester, however, didn't seem at all fazed by it. He simply raised one eyebrow, a little superciliously.

"I wasn't aware I'd refused to requisition anything," he said urbanely. "I'm assuming, of course, that everything you're trying to requisition is legal? And that there are no items that might result in me answering awkward questions posed by any House Select Committee?"

"Yes." Still flat and hard, and Stephen's eyes didn't waver from Lester's face, challenging in spite of Stephen's expressionless face.

Now a small frown appeared between Lester's eyes, and his gaze darted from Stephen's face to Nick's and only then to Leek's.

"Oliver?" he asked mildly, and maybe it was only Nick who caught the irritation underneath because Leek preened slightly, casting a look towards Stephen that was already edging into the triumphant.

"I was explaining the budget situation, James," he explained, puffing his chest out again. "While obviously I have every sympathy, at the moment there is simply not a strong enough argument to lay out that amount of expenditure."

Lester huffed, the irritation coming clearly to the surface now. "Would anyone care to elaborate on what exactly the expenditure in question relates to? Or am I simply supposed to guess?"

"Boats," said Nick simply. "Other stuff as well, but I suspect the boats are the sticking point because they'll be the biggest expense."

"And you already have boats," Leek interjected, throwing a simpering look in Lester's direction when the eyebrow rose again. "I don't see why - "

"And you think differently, do you, Hart?" Lester cut across him, ignoring the sudden look of frustration on Leek's face, which vanished almost as soon as it had arrived. Perhaps he hadn't seen it, as oblivious to it as Leek had seemed to be to his irritation.

"Yes." Still flat, still giving no ground.

When Stephen didn't elaborate, not even when confronted by Lester's politely astonished look, sarcastic in a way that only Lester could manage, Nick leapt into the fray, trying to sound like he knew what the hell he was talking about and trying not to resent Stephen's silence.

"These are ocean going, better suited for what we might find than the ones we've already got."

"I see." Lester rocked back on his heels, never taking his eyes off Stephen. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Professor, but the Earth is about two thirds covered in water?"

"That's right."

"And that's been fairly consistent? And likely to be in the future?"

"Well..." He glanced at Stephen, but his lab tech was no help. His gaze didn't move from Lester's face, although there was a slight frown between Stephen's eyes now, his lips pinched the way they always got when there was a conundrum he couldn't quite work out, one that was unsettling him. "It varies, but it's fair to say that there have been large bodies of water present since life originated. No water, no life. Even when sea levels have been at their lowest, there's still been water - just locked up as ice."

"Yes, yes, thank you. I get the point. Lots of water. And we've already had at least two incursions that have been water based, right, Leek?"

Leek was caught off guard at the question, his gaze having been flickering backwards and forwards between Stephen and Lester as though at a tennis match, even though Stephen's volleys were few and far between.

"I... I believe so, James, yes."

"So even if we haven't had one yet that involves the ocean - and frankly, I don't even want to consider the implications of something that pops up where it shouldn't in international waters - it's only a matter of time. And even if we're lucky enough not to have plesiosaurs trying to eat trawlers in the North Sea, that doesn't mean they aren't going to show up in something larger than a reservoir. Of course, this means that no one is to mention Loch Ness in Mr Temple's hearing when he gets back, is that clear?"

Nick's mouth curled up in a brief, involuntary smile. "I suspect Connor's already thought of that one all on his own."

"Undoubtedly. But that doesn't mean we have to encourage the boy." Lester finally tore his gaze from Stephen's face, the matter apparently having been settled to his satisfaction. "Sign the requisitions, Leek," he said, already sounding bored with the discussion, "There's a good man." He turned on his heel and headed back to his office, throwing back over his shoulder, "We'd better make sure that we're properly equipped or I'll be having to explain **that** to the House Select Committee."

"Of course, James." The words were pleasant enough but the look Leek threw the pair of them before he headed back to his office was anything but.

Nick watched him go before turning back towards Stephen. "Well, that was..." He trailed off when it became obvious that Stephen wasn't listening. He was watching Lester make his way back to his office instead, his brow still furrowed and the look on his face forbidding.

"Lester came through," Nick reminded him, his voice sharp.

"Yes," said Stephen slowly, still watching Lester and Nick bit back his response to that. "Don't you think that's a bit... odd?"

"In what way?"

"Overruling his right hand man like that. For us."

"For Connor and Abby," Nick reminded him again. "And he has a point."

"No," Stephen corrected him, finally turning to look at him. "**We** had a point. And he agreed with it."

"Yes. And your point?"

Stephen shrugged, his gaze drifting back to the window of Lester's office and his brow still creased. "Just thought it was worth pointing out that it's not exactly like Lester to be that helpful. That's all." Then he turned his gaze back to Nick, but his face stayed thoughtful, still frowning. "I'm going to find Harrison. Make sure Leek signs those requisitions before either of them has a chance to wriggle out of it."

"Do you really think that's likely?"

"Don't you?"

He didn't answer and, after a moment, Stephen turned on his heel and stalked away, his hands buried deeply into his pockets like he didn't trust them loose. Nick could only stand there, staring at Stephen's retreating back until his assistant disappeared behind the corridor doors, the brief sense of victory fading in the face of Stephen's last riposte.

He really was too bloody tired for this. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Day 21**

The cave they'd taken shelter in was too small; Abby felt claustrophobic in there even without Connor's constant presence, hovering just out of reach. He was quiet most of the time, a silent reminder not only of how much she'd messed up but of everything else as well. All the other myriad ways she'd messed up, or was still messing up, and didn't know how to fix. All the other terrors hemming her in until she thought she'd scream.

But screaming wouldn't make the fear go away. Nothing would make the fear go away; it was a constant companion, one that dogged her every step. If she paused, even for a second, the fear tripped her up, stealing away what was left of her strength. It woke up with her every day and lay down with her every night, pressing even closer to her than Connor did, until the weight of it smothered her and all she could do was lie still in the dark, Connor's body warm and twitching behind her. Each night she stared out of the too small cave to where the embers of their small fire still glowed softly and her imagination turned each shadow the fire cast into something with teeth and claws, ready to pounce and tear.

Each night, when exhaustion finally dragged her under, there were things waiting for her in the darkness, things that lurked and leapt and tore. And, worst of all, even her imagination, even her nightmares, fell far short of what could be really out there in the dark; they'd only just started to scratch the surface of the terrors this world held and each day held the promise of more.

No, that wasn't the worst thing of all. The worst thing was what almost broke her every day, when the sun finally rose and the pair of them crawled out of their rudimentary shelter, her eyes gritty and mouth sticky and stale, every muscle aching.

That was when Connor moved away from her. It might have only been a few steps but it always felt like more, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself that she was overreacting.

She'd take the claustrophobia over that any day, even if she wouldn't take the fear. And it was the fear that kept her from saying anything about it. Instead she kept silent, knowing that her expression was as pale and grim as Connor's.

Instead she gritted her teeth and dealt with the fear and the hunger and the ever-present sand, which blew into their shallow shelter and left a coarse coating over everything; the place where they slept, the food that they ate, and into their clothes where it rubbed the skin raw. Her scalp itched constantly and each time she gave in to the impulse and scratched, her fingers digging deep into her skin, she came away with gritty, dark grains under her ragged nails. If she scratched hard enough, for long enough, she came away with red under there as well.

She was beyond exhausted by now. They both were: tired of being dirty, itchy, hungry. Like the fear, it weighed her down, each and every day, until everything was gritty; another itch, another irritation. Another reflexive twitch to add to the rest. She couldn't even snap at Connor to relieve it, not any more. Not when he spent the entire time looking like he was treading on eggshells, edging around her like she was the most dangerous thing in this new world, like nothing else could have teeth as sharp or as painful. Even now he was avoiding her, or as close as he could when he was only a few steps distant.

"I'm..."

Connor looked up from where he was faffing about with his flint nodule again, trying to shape another knife for her. She hadn't nagged, even with the fear lurking just under her skin, tormenting her. And not just the fear of things with teeth, but the fear that at some point Connor would walk away again. That was another thought that rolled around her head in the quiet of the night and, sometimes, in the quiet of the day.

Connor was still watching her, his expression growing more and more worried, but, like her, he seemed frozen, unable to talk about it or anything else. She cleared her throat and gave him a smile that felt as gritty as the rest of her.

"I'm going to go exploring, okay?"

He opened his mouth like he was going to argue and then shut it again, his expression flitting from just mildly worried to anxious and too eager to please, both at once. Then he nodded, trying on a smile that looked as worn around the edges as her own had felt, and stared back down at his hands, now lying still on the sand that had settled everywhere.

The sand seemed to coat her tongue as well, and she swallowed heavily, feeling the weight of it settle in her stomach. "I won't go far," she reassured him. The words came out tentatively - half a promise and half a plea.

"Okay." He cleared his throat, still staring down at the flint shard in his hand. Then he thrust it out at her, his smile twitchy, still too eager to please but raw in spite of that. "Here."

She hesitated before moving towards him, searching for an answering smile, something reassuring. Their fingers touched for a second as she took it from him and he pulled back abruptly, wiping his palm nervously on his trousers.

"It's not perfect," he said, eyes darting towards her and then away. He licked at the corner of his mouth where the skin was already red and sore, rubbed raw like everything was. "But, you know..." He shrugged and gave a little laugh that trailed off, shooting her another of those twitchy, reflexive smiles. "I'll have another go later."

"It's fine, Connor," she said, her fingers twisting on the shard in her hand. It was smooth and cool under her touch, the blade glinting wicked and sharp in the sunlight, and she tucked it into her pocket, adding a belated, "Thank you."

That got her another smile, Connor's eyes holding something like hope above his beard. "Do you want..." He trailed off again, picking up the flint nodule and turning it over in his hands.

She bit at her lip, her teeth worrying at the scarred tissue that was rapidly forming there. She didn't want to put him off, not with everything so weird between them, but she desperately, desperately needed to get away to somewhere where she could breathe, just for a second. Just a moment's respite from everything, including Connor, however selfish that made her.

In the end, she didn't need to say anything. He must have read it all in her face and his eyes dropped back down to the flint nodule in his hands as he gave a half shrug, his tongue licking nervously at the sore by the side of his mouth again. "Just don't go far, okay?"

He didn't wait for her answer, focusing his attention back on making more tools for them rather than looking at her and she had no words for him, not now. After another moment's hesitation, she moved off, her hands shoved deeply into her pockets, her fingers wrapped tightly around the weapon he had made.

When she glanced back, he was watching her; this time he didn't look away.

She didn't go far and not just because Connor's eyes were still on her. She had her own reasons for wanting to stay close to him even while she needed to get away, reasons she didn't want to think about. It wasn't about fear, not entirely. Or maybe it was but just a different kind of fear. She no longer knew which, and the exhaustion that dragged her down every day fogged her mind, too, leaving everything dull and heavy until her head ached as much as her body. She needed fresh air, a change of scene. All the things she'd needed so often when she was safely back home, when this was neither safe nor home.

She headed instead along the beach, staying superstitiously away from the water's edge; the Mers were still a vivid memory and God only knew what else was lurking in that water. The sand was coarser the closer she got to the river, more like pebbles than the grit that coated everything. They shifted underneath her feet, making the going hard, and her thighs ached with the constant need to maintain her balance. The ache was echoed below her belly, and that was another thing she didn't want to think about. They'd been here weeks now; the cramping shouldn't have been unexpected but that didn't mean she wanted to deal with it, couldn't even begin to imagine how she could.

The going grew a little easier as she got closer to the edge of the escarpment. The ground here was more like mud than sand, and grasses grew, thickening the further away from the shore they got. She glanced back again and Connor was a vague shape, although his head to seemed to be turned towards her.

She was still in his line of sight and that was all the encouragement she needed to turn back towards the escarpment, eyeing it curiously, raising her hand to shield her face from the sun that flared off the pale rocks.

Now that she had the time to look closely at it instead of trudging along, eyes on the ground so that she didn't trip up, it wasn't as smooth as she'd thought, less sheer cliff and more like something weathered. Towards the delta there were tumbled rocks that they must have scrambled over a dozen or more times by now, but they'd never ventured past them inland, not yet. But where the rocks met the edge of the cliff, there might be a path up, at least if she was a mountain goat or whatever the equivalent was on this future world. Maybe it was the stress of the last few days but before she could think better of it, she moved towards it and started upwards, her hands and feet automatically seeking and finding hand holds and foot holds in the rock.

It was easier than it looked from a distance. Much easier. The rock was even paler close up and the sunlight bouncing off it made it gleam so brightly that looking at it made her eyes burn, leaving her blinking and half-blind. But even so she was several feet off the ground, and several feet along the cliff, before she paused for breath and wiped the sweat out of her eyes with a sleeve that was white with dust.

The rock was firm beneath her feet and she let go with one hand, twisting slightly so that she could stare out over the beach and down towards the ocean. It glittered, too, the light bouncing off the swell. And it stretched for miles, beyond even the bay. Her eyes tracked around the coastline, to the headland on the opposite side.

Connor was right. The bay was wider, much wider than she'd thought, and she wasn't even sure now whether where they'd come through the anomaly was on the far side of the bay or further, around the headland and out of sight.

She shivered, leaning back against the rock as though the warmth it had absorbed from the sun would warm her, too.

Connor was right. If the anomaly opened again, they'd never see it.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, tasting salt and chalk from the dust kicked up by her feet and fingers. And then she turned back towards the cliff face, fingers digging deeper into the rock.

There was no going back, not now. Only moving forwards.

The going stayed easy; there were a hundred little pockets washed out by the rain where the softer rock had dissolved and it gave her the grip she needed as long as she moved sideways rather than up. Up had been her first intention. Now she wasn't quite sure where she was headed, except that she needed to keep moving, taking the path of least resistance. It came very close to actually being a path, angled up along a fault line in the rock where the sediment changed, lighter above and slightly darker, and harder, below, another marker of aeons passing, separating both of them from home.

She paused again where the natural ledge widened, leaning against the rock as she flexed her fingers and looking around. There was an outcropping ahead, even darker against the cliff face, and she didn't remember seeing that when she'd been standing on the beach. She frowned, leaning out a little to try and get a good look at it. It was automatic to slide her eyes past that and along the beach, looking for Connor.

He wasn't there.

She froze, her heart beating rabbit fast in her chest, hard and fierce and terrified. He wouldn't leave her. He couldn't...

He couldn't.

She leant out further, her heart still hammering and her eyes darting down towards the shore, mapping out the expanse of the beach in case he'd moved. He had to have moved because if not...

Mers might not be the only thing lurking in the water.

There was no sign of him near their camp, or down near the water's edge. Her fingers tightened on the rock, barely registering the pain as she leant out further and her weight made it cut into her fingertips. Everything - every part of her - was focused on finding Connor.

Oh God. Connor...

"Abby!"

She stumbled, not quite falling even though the sudden surge of relief came close to overwhelming her, leaving her knees shaky and her head reeling with it. When she looked down, still a little dizzy with it, Connor was standing below her on the beach, balancing himself on the scree at the base of the cliffs. His face was tilted towards her, only fifteen or twenty feet below where she stood - it was close enough for her to see the tightness in the lines around his eyes, in the clench of his jaw.

"What the hell are you doing?" His voice came out high pitched, shaking a little, just like her knees, and she bit back on her first, instinctive response of defensiveness. "What if you... Christ, Abby. What if you fall?"

"I'm not going to fall." That was unthinking reflex and she watched him swallow, look away.

"If you fall..." The words were low and she had to strain to hear them over the sound of the waves. "If you break something..."

_Don't come crying to me._ Only Connor would never say that to her, or do that to her.

It was still instinct to stay defensive.

"I'm fine," she insisted even as she leant back against the rock behind her, edging a little further from the edge. If he noticed, he didn't comment, not about that. "It's safe enough and..."

And. All those little arguments she didn't want to have with him, not now. _I'm a big girl_ or _I know what I'm doing_ when she didn't know or didn't feel like it.

"There's something up here," she said instead, turning away from him to look back up the cliff face at that tantalising glimpse of darkness. "Just... Gimme a sec."

"Abby..."

There was something broken in his voice, enough to make her hesitate but not enough to make her stop, not this time. Not even when she could picture his face, the fear that would be in it, seeing it in the folds and cracks of the white rock in front of her. If anything, it drove her onwards, away from it.

The sun was hot overhead and the sweat dripped into her eyes as the cliff face burned and blurred in front of her. But her feet were steady, as steady as her breathing; in and out, perfectly controlled. It was the only thing that she could control.

Connor had stopped talking, perhaps recognising that there was no reasoning with her. If she kept moving, maybe...

Maybe what, she didn't know. Just that she had to keep moving. The path in the rock face widened the further up she got, until she could walk rather than climb, her fingers staying on the rock face more to steady herself than for any real support. She just kept moving, onwards and upwards, until she reached that patch of darkness, where the rock opened up before her.

It was cool and quiet as she moved into the shade, the air still and the sound of the ocean muted the further she moved in. She blinked several times rapidly, but her eyes were used to the light; each time she closed them, the whiteness of the rock flared in front of her, the after image burned into her retinas by the brightness of the sun.

She took several steps deeper, stumbling in, her feet unsteady as her vision blurred. All of her surety was gone now, swallowed in the dimness. She gave up, closing her eyes and letting it take her, just for a moment, tasting the salt on the air, the disorientation dizzying her for a breath, for two.

When she was little, when her father always came back after he'd left, he'd bring her back the largest seashells he could find for her and hold them up to her ear so she could hear the oceans he'd travelled. She'd giggle and listen to the roar of the waves. It sounded like that now - not real, nothing but the sound of her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, everything distant and washed out. She kept her eyes closed and stretched out her hands, wider and wider with her fingertips spreading, and still didn't touch rock.

The bright afterimages had faded and she opened her eyes again, finally able to see. It wasn't as dim as she'd thought; the sun was still bright outside and there was enough of it reflected back into the cave for her to make out the walls, the width of it, so much wider than the small hollow in the rocks below they'd been sheltering in.

And the entrance wasn't the only source of light. Some spilled down from the back of the cave from a crack in the rocks above; faint as it was it pulled her in, tantalising her as she ventured deeper. The floor wasn't even, sloping up towards the back, but the incline was gentle enough for her to walk on it, at least until it narrowed right at the back, up towards where the light crept in. There was a trickle of water running down the back wall, either condensation or the last of the rain soaking through the top soil and the soft _plink, plink, plink_ as it fell tinkled hollowly.

She stretched out her fingers, letting the droplets run over them and drip to the floor.

There was a soft scraping sound from behind her and she spun on her heels, fast enough to be dizzy-making, her heart back to thrumming furiously in her chest as the ever-present fear surged again. The light outside was still too bright for her to make much out but the shadow that blocked the entrance for a moment before moving inside was Connor-shaped.

He'd followed her up like he'd followed her here, to this world. Leapt straight in after her without looking; a cliff face couldn't have been anywhere near as terrifying after the first fall, not even for Connor.

He stopped at the entrance, maybe as blinded by the switch from light to dark as she had been. He didn't say anything, though, and maybe that's what drove her to finally speak.

"It's a cave," she said, her voice still breathless with the remnants of fear. As things to say went, it was rather pointless because Connor had eyes and a brain to go with them, but she needed to say something, anything. He was just a blur of shadow against the wall now; dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes. What was left of them.

"I thought..." She hadn't, that was the problem, driven by instinct as much as anything else. But even so... "I think it might be safer here," she said, and that was it, the big thing, an almost superstitious fear that now she'd said it - now the words hung in the air between them - she'd tempted fate. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

"Yeah," said Connor and leant back against the wall, just watching her. She could see him clearly now in the light that spilled in from outside; the stubble on his chin and the exhaustion in his eyes. "Maybe."

"It's got to be worth a try, right?"

He snorted, running his hand over his face, brow to chin. "I don't fancy climbing up here in the dark."

It wasn't meant as a rebuke; at least, she didn't think so. It felt like one anyway and that was enough silence her.

"Maybe..." Connor trailed off, simply looking at her form a moment, as though her silence had taken away his words, too. "Maybe I could widen the way up. Just a bit. I mean, it's not like it would hurt to try, right?"

His voice ended on a hopeful note, and the hope in it kept her silent, too. He wilted a little in the face of it, looking away from her and instead staring back out of the entrance of the cave. He was chewing on his lip again, where the skin was cracked and sore.

She shifted position, not missing the way his attention darted back to her and then away again. "No," she said quietly. "It probably wouldn't hurt to try, if you thought you could... Can you? I mean, it's rock. Would it even be possible?"

He shrugged, a slow roll of the shoulders that didn't tell her much of anything. His eyes stayed fixed on whatever had caught his attention outside the entrance - or, more likely, what hadn't. "I think it's limestone," he said, "or something like it. This..." He stamped on the floor, the sound of his boot ringing hollowly. "I think it must be older. Like this whole thing," he waved one hand vaguely to take in the cave, the cliffs, maybe the world, "is sedimentary, maybe."

Geography and geology had never interested her much, not like biology had captured her attention. Maybe if she'd stayed at Uni, like her mother had wanted, she'd have broadened her interests, but somehow she didn't think that studying rock would ever have been satisfying. But she'd take Connor's word for it; he sucked up knowledge like a sponge, spurting it back out again at the oddest moments. "Okay," she said, content to let him run with it, if only because it was the first interest in anything beyond simply living that he'd shown since they'd got here.

He looked back at her, still chewing his lip, and the look in his eyes was almost wary. Or maybe she was projecting her own wariness, her own fear, onto him. She was no longer sure when it came to Connor. When it came to anything, really.

"Limestone will dissolve more easily in water than some other types of rock," he said. "Parts of it anyway, all of that calcium carbonate that makes up the original shells." She'd take his word for that as well, even though he was lecturing; lizards didn't have shells and it was lizards she loved and knew inside out. It wasn't like she could do her normal trick of reading up on any creatures she'd been assigned before she went near them, ferociously devouring book after book after essay and thesis until she felt she knew them in and out and letting her instincts tell her the rest. But she wasn't stupid - she might not have had Connor's innate thirst for knowledge and capacity for remembering complete trivia, but she could follow the argument well enough.

"So this is here because the rain's washed out the limestone? Left the cave behind?"

"Yeah, probably. The rain or the sea."

That gave her pause, another worry to add to the pile; it wasn't as though anything that happened to them now could ever go smoothly.

"But the tide can't get up this high, can it?" She didn't want to face that disappointment, the idea that this - this place she'd started to let herself believe might be somewhere they could stay out of the reach of things with teeth and claws - could be subject to other dangers.

"Not now, no," he said, and then corrected himself. "Well, probably not. I can't think of any times where high tide and low tide were this far apart. Not off the top of my head. So I'd guess we're safe."

The smile he gave her was tentative; all it did was make her feel transparent, like even Connor could see right through her to the hollow fear underneath, and it soon slipped from his face, killed again by her silence. He moved towards her instead, and then past her, deeper into the cave, looking up towards the light at the back.

"It's a natural chimney," she said, even though he'd probably have worked that out himself - although with Connor who could tell? He could be intensely practical when it came to gadgets and intensely not when it came to anything else. She watched as he reached out and touched the wall, not where she'd touched it, where the water still dripped, but to the side, where the floor sloped up and the ceiling curved down to meet it. He pulled his fingers back and eyed them curiously.

"It's dry," he said, glancing over at her. She simply looked back, no longer following his train of thought. "I mean, it doesn't even look like floods when it rains."

"It hasn't rained today," she said quietly. "And it soon evaporates when it does."

"No, it hasn't, but it's cooler in here, no sun. I wouldn't have expected it to, you know, dry that quickly. If it was going to flood, I mean," he added, the words coming out in a flurry. "There's this..." He gestured towards a small rivulet she'd stepped over without really taking any notice, one that ran in a groove towards the entrance and then seemed to get soaked back into the rock rather than running out of the entrance. "But the rest of it seems dry."

There was something like hope flickering in her chest now, but she didn't want to move too soon and extinguish it.

"So you think it's got possibilities?" she asked not realising until Connor's lips quirked that that was the kind of thing she'd said - that they'd both said - while looking for their most recent flat. Then it had been something jokey and semi-serious, like they were just playing at being adults who had adult concerns like mortgages and DIY; now it seemed all too serious.

"Maybe," said Connor, walking back towards the entrance, looking like he was lost in thought. He must have been; he was absent-mindedly touching the ring he wore around his neck, and he only did that when he was stressed, working something out in his head, right down where all those gears did their shifting in places she couldn't reach and didn't have a clue about. "Maybe. If..."

She followed him, skirting around the edges of the rivulet, now that she knew it was there. There was nothing new to see out of the entrance, nothing out of the ordinary - sun, sand and beach, and a sky too wide to contain it all. If she shifted, moved past Connor and leant against the right hand side of the entrance, she could make out the darker smudge between the gap in the rocks that marked the edge of the escarpment, back where future forests grew, dark and deep.

"If?"

He shrugged, still staring down at the path they'd climbed up. The sun was higher in the sky now, almost directly above them. She could barely make out the path now that there were no shadows to mark it.

"If I can do something to make that easier, so we don't have to worry about climbing up in the dark and breaking something."

"You said it was limestone," she reminded him and he sighed, huffing out the breath like it was the last one he had in him.

"It's still rock, Abby," he said, and the attempt at patience was clear in his voice, the kind of thing she'd have smacked him for before. Before. "It's still rock and... well, it might take a while."

Maybe it was the cool of the cave, or a gust of wind coming off the ocean, threatening another storm, but she shivered, the words seeming to sink down into her and suck all of the warmth out of her. A while. It sounded permanent.

It sounded terrifying.

"It's got to be done, though," Connor continued, seemingly oblivious of her momentary chill. "I wasn't joking about not breaking something."

She summoned up a smile from somewhere, something as washed out and pale as the rocks around them, but when Connor turned to look at her he wasn't smiling. His eyes were dark and serious above his beard, tight stress lines clear at the corners. "If we... Abby, we can't get hurt. There's nothing..." His voice broke for a second, just a second, but it chilled her further, all the way down into her bones. "If we break something or get hurt or get sick..."

"There's no one..." she whispered, completing the thought when he couldn't. She wrapped her arms around herself, staring out over the white vista that stretched before her, the rocks that went on and on and were made of things that weren't even supposed to exist yet. It didn't help the cold she felt. It didn't help when the arms she really wanted around her were Connor's.

"We're the last people on earth," she said, the words slipping out of her. It was too big an idea, sticking in her throat, settling in the depths of her belly where it ached and hurt. No one else out there. Not just somewhere else on this world, not seen and not heard and unreachable. Just not **there**.

"Yes," said Connor, and his voice was made small by it. "We are."


End file.
